Alabama asks court to allow electoral map previously deemed illegal racial gerrymander

Alabama has asked a federal court to allow it to return to a 2023 congressional map that courts previously deemed an illegal racial gerrymander.

Attorney General Steve Marshall filed the emergency motion Tuesday, requesting that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama lift injunctions blocking the map. The state asked the court rule by 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The motion comes just a week after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for sixty years.

Previously, a three-judge panel found that the 2023 map violated that provision of the VRA. Today, Alabama is still bound by a court-ordered agreement to use its current remedial congressional map until 2030.

Now, the state is arguing that the legal landscape has changed.

“The Supreme Court has confirmed that the claims that led to the injunctions against Alabama’s map are no longer viable,” Marshall said in a press release. “We are asking the court to lift those injunctions so that Alabama can conduct its congressional elections using the map its legislature lawfully enacted.”

If Alabama were to return to the 2023 map, it would eliminate one of the state’s two Black-majority congressional districts currently held by Democrats. 

Alongside Louisiana and Tennessee, Alabama is one of three states where Republicans are rushing to pass new, gerrymandered maps in time for this year’s midterm elections in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

On Monday, a special session of the Alabama legislature called by Gov. Kay Ivey (R) convened to redraw the state’s congressional and legislative maps.

Legislative committees in the state House and Senate approved new district boundaries Tuesday, even though absentee voting already started for the 2026 primaries. The bills now head to the House and Senate floors for approval.