Allen v. Milligan
The Supreme Court blocked a lower court order that would have required Alabama to use a remedial congressional map protecting Black voters' electoral power, allowing the State to use its 2023 map — which federal courts found intentionally discriminatory against Black Alabamians — for the upcoming 2026 elections.
The emergency order is the latest move in a years-long redistricting battle and arrives just after the Court overhauled the legal test for Voting Rights Act claims; the underlying question of whether Alabama's map is ultimately lawful has not been decided and the case will continue.
“Its view that conducting the elections under court-imposed maps would be more convenient for the State was not a valid justification for that intervention.”
The majority rejecting the district court's stated reason for reinstating the remedial map over the State's own enacted map.
How it got here: The district court reinstated an injunction blocking Alabama's 2023 congressional map and ordered use of a court-drawn remedial map; Alabama immediately applied for a stay at the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
After the 2020 census, Alabama drew a congressional map with only one majority-Black district. Federal courts found this violated the Voting Rights Act by weakening Black Alabamians' voting power, and the Supreme Court agreed in 2023. Rather than comply and draw a second district where Black voters could elect their preferred candidate, Alabama passed a 2023 map that courts later found intentionally made such a district mathematically impossible to draw. A court-ordered remedial map had governed Alabama's 2024 elections.
The question before the Court
Should Alabama be allowed to use its own disputed 2023 congressional map for upcoming elections — rather than a court-drawn remedial map designed to protect Black voters' political power — while the legal fight continues on appeal?
Why it matters
Hundreds of thousands of Alabama voters must be manually reassigned to new congressional districts under the 2023 map — a process elections officials say typically takes months but now must be done in days. Black Alabamians in affected districts will vote under a map multiple courts found dilutes their political power, pending a final ruling from the Supreme Court.
What changes now
Alabama will use its 2023 congressional map for the 2026 elections, including an August 11 special primary in four congressional districts. County election officials must now manually reassign hundreds of thousands of voters to new districts in an extremely compressed timeframe. The stay remains in effect while the appeal proceeds; if Alabama's appeal is dismissed or the lower court's judgment is affirmed, the stay terminates automatically. The merits — whether the 2023 map is lawful — have not been decided.
What this does not decide
This emergency order does not decide whether Alabama's 2023 congressional map actually violates the Voting Rights Act or the Fourteenth Amendment's ban on intentional racial discrimination. Those merits questions remain open and will be resolved in future appellate proceedings.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Dissent (3). Justice Sotomayor (author), joined by Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argues the Court is rewarding Alabama's deliberate defiance of a court order the Supreme Court itself affirmed in 2023. She contends the district court correctly found intentional racial discrimination — a factual conclusion that appellate courts can overturn only if it is clearly wrong — and that Alabama's own election director testified voter reassignment takes months, not the days now available. She would deny the stay and keep the court-ordered remedial map in place, warning the majority's order sows chaos and corrodes the rule of law. Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the standard four-part framework for emergency stays: Alabama had to show it was likely to win on the merits, would suffer irreparable harm without a stay, the other side would not be more harmed by a stay, and the public interest supported one.
- On the Voting Rights Act claim, the Court found Alabama was likely to prevail under the recently decided Callais framework, which requires a plaintiff's proposed alternative map to perform just as well as the State's map on every legitimate state redistricting goal — including keeping coastal communities together and avoiding pairing sitting members of Congress against each other. The district court had found a violation even though plaintiffs' map failed both of those criteria.
- On the Fourteenth Amendment intentional-discrimination claim, the Court held the district court erred by treating Alabama's legal disagreement with the earlier court order as evidence of discriminatory intent — without properly applying the presumption of legislative good faith, which requires courts to resolve ambiguous evidence in the legislature's favor.
- The Court also found the district court failed to follow Callais's instruction that the fact voters of different races tend to vote for different political parties does not, by itself, prove racial bloc voting sufficient to establish a Voting Rights Act violation.
- On harm and public interest, the Court invoked its repeated warnings that lower courts should not change election rules on the eve of an election, and rejected the district court's rationale that using a court-imposed map would be more convenient for the State — finding that was not a valid reason to override the elected legislature's map choice.