Federal Court Strikes Down Alabama Congressional Redistricting Plan as Unlawful Gerrymandering

On May 26, 2026, a three-judge federal panel in Birmingham issued a 102-page order blocking Alabama from using its legislature-drawn congressional map in the November midterm elections, finding the plan "intentionally discriminated based on race" against Black voters [1][2]. The unanimous ruling by Judges Stanley Marcus, Anna Manasco, and Terry Moorer ordered the state to continue using a court-drawn "Special Master" map that includes two districts where Black voters can meaningfully compete — the same map under which Democrat Shomari Figures flipped the 2nd Congressional District in 2024 [3].

The decision is the latest confrontation in a redistricting saga that has stretched across five years, three trips to the Supreme Court, and a fundamental rewriting of Voting Rights Act jurisprudence. Alabama is expected to file an emergency appeal, potentially sending the case back to the Supreme Court for a fourth time before voters cast ballots in November [4].

The Numbers: What's at Stake in the Map

Alabama has seven congressional districts. Under the state's original 2021 map, only one — the 7th District, represented by Democrat Terri Sewell — had a Black voting-age population (BVAP) large enough for Black voters to elect their preferred candidates. That district had a BVAP of approximately 55.3% [5].

The 2nd District, which stretches across southeastern Alabama, had a BVAP of roughly 30.1% under the 2021 legislature-drawn lines — enough to constitute a significant minority population but not enough to give Black voters a realistic chance of electing their preferred candidate [5][6].

Under the court-ordered Special Master map, the 2nd District was redrawn to include Montgomery, parts of the Black Belt, and a portion of Mobile, raising its BVAP to approximately 48.7% [6]. Despite falling below a strict numerical majority, an analysis using historical election data showed that the Black-preferred candidate would have won 16 of 17 recent test elections by an average margin of 10.3 percentage points [6].

Source: U.S. Census Bureau / Court filings

Data as of May 26, 2026CSV

A Five-Year Procedural Marathon

The litigation began on November 16, 2021, when a coalition of civil rights organizations and individual Alabama voters filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state's newly enacted congressional plan under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that dilute minority voting power [7].

January 2022: A three-judge district court panel struck down the map, holding it violated the VRA by failing to include a second district where Black voters had an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates [7].

February 2022: The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, stayed the district court's injunction, allowing the original map to be used for the 2022 midterm elections. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence cited the Purcell principle — the doctrine that courts should not change election rules close to an election [7].

June 8, 2023: The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Allen v. Milligan, affirming the district court and holding that Alabama's map likely violated Section 2 of the VRA. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Jackson, and Kavanaugh [7][8].

July 2023: The Alabama Legislature passed a new map — but the three-judge panel found it still failed to comply with the Court's order. The new map raised the 2nd District's BVAP only to approximately 40%, which the court determined was insufficient [8].

October 5, 2023: The panel appointed a Special Master, who drew a compliant map — "Remedial Plan 3" — that was used for the 2024 elections [6].

May 2025: The same three-judge panel ruled that the legislature's 2023 map not only violated the VRA but constituted intentional racial discrimination under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause — a significantly more serious finding [3].

April 29, 2026: The Supreme Court issued its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, a 6-3 ruling that substantially raised the bar for Section 2 VRA redistricting claims and found Louisiana's creation of a second majority-Black district was itself a racial gerrymander [9].

May 11, 2026: The Supreme Court vacated the lower court's injunctions in the Alabama cases and remanded for reconsideration "in light of" Callais [10].

May 26, 2026: The three-judge panel, after reconsideration, blocked Alabama's 2023 map again — this time relying primarily on the 14th Amendment's prohibition of intentional racial discrimination rather than Section 2 [1][2].

Source: Court records and news reports

Data as of May 26, 2026CSV

The Legal Standard: How the Panel Navigated Callais

The Supreme Court's Callais decision created a new legal landscape. Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Alito held that Louisiana's legislature had engaged in a racial gerrymander when it deliberately drew a second majority-Black congressional district to comply with a lower court's interpretation of Section 2 [9]. The decision effectively narrowed Section 2 to the point that voting rights advocates called it "inoperable" for redistricting challenges [11].

Alabama's Attorney General, Steve Marshall, argued that Callais required the lower court to dissolve its injunction and allow the state to use its 2023 map, which contained only one majority-Black district [12]. Marshall contended that the Special Master map itself was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Callais framework because race was the predominant factor in its creation [12].

The three-judge panel rejected this argument. In its May 26 order, the court drew a sharp distinction: even if Callais changed the rules for Section 2 claims, Alabama's 2023 map independently violated the 14th Amendment because it was drawn with intentional racial discrimination [1][3]. The panel wrote that "Alabama cannot use Callais to legitimize its pre-Callais decision to double down on the discriminatory vote dilution that we and the Supreme Court found" [3].

The court pointed to specific evidence of discriminatory intent: the legislature had deliberately distributed Black voters across districts "at least in part because they are Black," adopted unusual procedural steps including special legislative findings, and prioritized preserving Gulf Coast districts while fracturing Black Belt communities [3].

The Cost to Alabama Taxpayers

Precise figures for Alabama's total legal defense costs across the five-year litigation are not comprehensively reported in public records. What is documented: the Special Master process alone cost more than $500,000 in taxpayer funds. Special Master Richard Allen billed $89,908 for 236.6 hours at $380 per hour. Attorney Michael A. Scodro of Mayer Brown billed at a discounted rate of $1,161 per hour. Cartographer David Ely was paid $105,600 for 264 hours at $400 per hour [13].

Beyond the court-appointed costs, Alabama taxpayers spent an additional $4.45 million to hold a special primary election in August 2024 across four redrawn congressional districts [14]. These figures do not include the state Attorney General's office defense costs, any outside counsel retained by the state, or the plaintiffs' attorneys' fees — which the winning side in VRA litigation is typically entitled to recover [13].

Steelmanning Alabama's Position

Alabama's defense rests on a constitutional argument with support from the Supreme Court's conservative majority. The core claim: drawing districts primarily to achieve a target racial composition — even a benign one — violates the Equal Protection Clause under the framework established in Shaw v. Reno (1993) [15].

In Shaw, the Court held that redistricting plans "so extremely irregular on their face that they rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race" are constitutionally suspect [15]. Alabama has argued that the Special Master's map — which explicitly set out to raise the BVAP in the 2nd District — is precisely such a race-predominant plan.

The Callais majority endorsed a version of this argument, holding that Louisiana's creation of a second majority-Black district based on Section 2 compliance was race-based sorting that required strict scrutiny [9]. Justice Alito wrote that the "sorting of voters on the basis of race is constitutionally suspect" regardless of whether it benefits or harms minority voters.

Conservative legal scholars and organizations, including the Pacific Legal Foundation, have argued that Section 2 as applied to redistricting creates an irreconcilable tension with the Equal Protection Clause: it effectively requires race-conscious district drawing to achieve proportional representation, which Shaw and its progeny prohibit [15]. Justice Thomas, in his Allen v. Milligan dissent, argued Section 2 should not apply to redistricting at all.

The three-judge panel, however, found that Alabama's argument was undermined by the state's own conduct. The court determined that the legislature's 2023 map was not a race-neutral alternative but was itself drawn with racial intent — to reduce Black voting power [3]. This distinction matters: the constitutional objection to race-based redistricting cuts both ways, and a map drawn to dilute minority votes is at least as constitutionally problematic as one drawn to concentrate them.

Electoral Consequences: A House Seat in Play

The practical stakes are clear. Under the Special Master map used in 2024, Democrat Shomari Figures defeated Republican Caroleene Dobson in the 2nd District with 54.5% of the vote (156,622 votes) to Dobson's 45.5% (130,568 votes) [16]. Figures became just the fourth Black person elected to Congress from Alabama in the state's history, and his election gave Alabama two Black members of Congress simultaneously for the first time — alongside Terri Sewell in the 7th District [16].

If Alabama's 2023 legislature-drawn map were reinstated, reducing the 2nd District's BVAP from approximately 48.7% to roughly 40% or lower, the seat would likely revert to Republican control. In a narrowly divided House, the difference between one and two Democratic seats in Alabama carries national significance [2].

Republicans currently hold five of Alabama's seven congressional seats. Under the Special Master map, they hold five and Democrats hold two. Under the legislature's 2023 map, Republicans would likely control six seats to Democrats' one [2].

Alabama in Context: A Pattern Across the South

Alabama is not alone. Following the Callais decision, several Southern states moved to redraw maps that included majority-minority districts previously mandated or encouraged by VRA litigation. Tennessee Republicans quickly passed a new map eliminating the state's sole majority-minority congressional district [11]. Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina have all faced or are facing redistricting challenges under Section 2 [17].

The scope of the potential impact is large. According to an analysis cited by Stateline, the total number of majority-Black or majority-Hispanic state legislative districts across 10 Southern states could fall from 342 to 202 if Callais is applied broadly [18]. At the congressional level, federal courts had previously ordered map changes in Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, with additional challenges pending in several other states [17].

Alabama's case stands out for the sheer persistence of the litigation. Few states have had their maps struck down, redrawn, struck down again, sent to a special master, used under court order, vacated by the Supreme Court, and then blocked again — all within a five-year window. The three-judge panel's finding of intentional discrimination, as opposed to mere VRA non-compliance, places Alabama in a particularly difficult legal position [3].

The Plaintiffs and Their Strategy

The challenge to Alabama's maps was brought by a coalition of individual plaintiffs and civil rights organizations. The named individual plaintiffs include Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letetia Jackson, and Shalela Dowdy. Organizational plaintiffs include Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP [7][19].

The legal team is led by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), which has coordinated redistricting litigation across multiple states as part of a broader national strategy [19]. Co-counsel includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the law firm Hogan Lovells LLP, and the Alabama firm Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb [19].

For the LDF, the Alabama case has served as a cornerstone of its national redistricting portfolio. The organization filed the original challenges on November 15, 2021, and has litigated the case through every level of the federal judiciary [19]. The Allen v. Milligan victory in 2023 was widely viewed as a landmark affirmation of Section 2's applicability to redistricting — which makes the subsequent Callais reversal all the more consequential for the organization's strategy [7][9].

The LDF also represents plaintiffs in redistricting challenges in Louisiana, Georgia, and at the local government level in Alabama's Jefferson County [19]. The Alabama congressional case has functioned as a test case whose outcomes ripple across these other proceedings.

What Happens Next

The three-judge panel's May 26 order is almost certainly headed back to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has previously sought emergency stays from Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles applications from the 11th Circuit [4][12].

The central question the Supreme Court will face: does the panel's finding of intentional racial discrimination under the 14th Amendment survive Callais? The Callais decision addressed Section 2 of the VRA, not the separate constitutional prohibition on intentional discrimination. The panel's order was carefully constructed to rest on the 14th Amendment ground, which the Supreme Court did not directly address in Callais [1][3].

If the Court stays the panel's injunction, Alabama would use the legislature's 2023 map for the November 2026 elections, likely costing Democrats a House seat. If the Court allows the injunction to stand, the Special Master map remains in effect, and the 2nd District remains competitive for Figures's re-election bid.

The timeline is tight. Alabama's candidate qualifying deadline and primary election schedule depend on which map is in force. Each delay adds administrative costs and voter confusion — on top of the millions already spent [14].

Five years into this fight, Alabama's redistricting battle has become a barometer for the future of voting rights enforcement in the United States. The question is no longer just about seven congressional districts in one state. It is about whether the legal tools that civil rights advocates have used for six decades to challenge discriminatory maps remain viable after Callais — and whether the 14th Amendment's prohibition on intentional discrimination can carry the weight that Section 2 no longer bears.