WASHINGTON (LN) — Alabama is asking the Supreme Court to let it use its own 2023 congressional map — with one majority-Black district rather than two — before a primary now 11 days away, arguing the justices' April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais compels the same result for Alabama.
The 25-page emergency filing asks the justices at minimum to pause the lower-court orders blocking the 2023 map while the court considers the state's pending appeals.
The dispute stretches back to Alabama's 2021 congressional map, which a divided Supreme Court held in Allen v. Milligan violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by packing a large share of the state's Black voters into a single central-Alabama district while dispersing others across the Black Belt region, where they fell short of a majority in any other seat.
Alabama responded by adopting a new map in 2023, but a federal district court blocked it, ruling the revised plan still discriminated against Black voters and ordering the state to draw a second majority-Black district instead.
Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre told the justices the state would otherwise be forced to hold elections under a map that was, in the state's framing, "erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst." Bowdre argued that when Alabama drew the 2023 map it sought to achieve neutral goals such as protecting incumbents and refused to let race predominate — and that the state had effectively complied with Callais before Callais was decided.
The state contends its situation mirrors Louisiana's and that the cases "should end the same way: with this year's elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race." Alabama's Legislature has already held a special session and is ready to pass a bill reinstating the 2023 map, the filing says, and officials are examining whether election deadlines could be shifted to accommodate special elections under that plan if the injunction is promptly lifted.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency applications from Alabama's circuit, directed challengers to respond by 5 p.m. EDT on Monday, May 11.
The justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until May 18 — one day — leaving Alabama's election potentially hours away from any Supreme Court action.