Alabama’s Republican leaders celebrated Tuesday night’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows the state to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s election. Meanwhile, opponents of the map said they’re worried about implications not only for Alabama’s representation in Congress but for other states’ maps, local elections and the future of voting rights.
Alabama’s Republican governor, Kay Ivey, released a statement calling the ruling a win for Alabamians.
“Alabama knows our state, our people and our districts best,” Ivey wrote. “The United States Supreme Court’s decision is plain common sense and enables our values to be best represented in Congress.”
Alabama had been using a map drawn by a federal court with two districts where Black residents make up a majority – or close to it. The map now in place has only one such district, and a lower court ruled twice that it intentionally discriminates against Black voters. State legislators drew that map in 2023.
“The Court’s decision … affirms that Alabama’s elected representatives, not federal judges, have the primary authority to draw the maps under which Alabamians choose their own leaders,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote in a statement.
But Scott Douglas, executive director of Greater Birmingham Ministries, a plaintiff in the case, said Ivey and Marshall are using the words “Alabamians,” “our values” and “we” in ways that have historically been used in the state and that don’t include all of its people or perspectives.
“That sounds like the plantation master saying, as for me and mine, we need justice, and we need a growing economy, and we need people to buy our cotton and our crops,” Douglas said. “He's not talking about slaves. When ‘we’ is used in a limited way, you're not speaking for all Alabamians, and it really was a code word.
“I'm an Alabamian. Why can't my voice be heard? Were you talking about me? Are we talking about my kinfolk, my neighborhood, my school?”
Alabama is one of several Southern states that raced to adopt different maps ahead of November’s mid-term elections after the Supreme Court struck down a majority-Black district in Louisiana in April. The redistricting is part of efforts driven by President Donald Trump to maintain Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Congresswoman Terri Sewell, a Democrat who currently represents the one Black-majority district that will remain in Alabama, said in a social-media video that because Black voters make up nearly one-third of the electorate, they deserve two seats at Alabama’s seven-district table.
“The right-wing justices of the Supreme Court are trying to take us back to the Jim Crow era, to a time before Black voters could participate fully in our democracy,” Sewell said.
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin also criticized the court and called for its expansion.
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not neutral,” Woodfin wrote in a Facebook post. “It has been captured by a political project that has been building for decades. When a court loses the trust of the people, the Constitution gives the people a remedy. We should not be afraid to use it.”
Evan Milligan, an individual plaintiff in the case, said watching arguments over the map in court during the past few years and then seeing the outcome is like watching a sports game where officials intervene afterward, declaring the worst team the winner.
He said local elections across the country, for everything from school boards to city councils, are now at risk of gerrymandering because of the court’s decision.
“You could have a coordinated effort from anti-democracy groups who want to create maps that advantage those who see the world like them, even if they might be a very small number of people,” Milligan said.
JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said the court’s ruling represents an inflection point in history and is the culmination of voter-suppression tactics over the past decade. The ACLU is one organization providing legal representation for plaintiffs in the case.
“What's even more disappointing, quite honestly, is our foot soldiers, who are still living, who have been fighting this fight for decades, and seemingly seeing in real time their efforts eroded,” Gilchrist said.
Milligan noted that the ruling from the Supreme Court is a temporary action granting Alabama officials’ emergency request. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama has set the underlying case for a re-trial no later than January of 2027. Milligan said the plaintiffs will continue to fight.
“We really are about the business of community building and freedom for our people, and for me, when I say our people, I certainly mean Black people,” Milligan said. “I also mean Alabamians. I also mean caregivers. I also mean poor people and working people. I will continue to work and to pursue goals that make life better for those groups specifically.”
The Alabama Republican Party said it will keep fighting, too. And like Milligan, it’s using sports analogies.
“Alabamians aren’t satisfied if our football teams have a 6-and-1 record, and Alabama Republicans certainly aren’t satisfied with a 6-and-1 congressional map,” reads a statement from Scott Stadthagen, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party.
He’s referring to six districts where Republicans are expected to win and one district – Sewell’s – where Democrats have better odds.
“We want a perfect 7-and-0 map, and I am confident that the Republican supermajority in the Legislature will work toward that goal,” Stadthagen continued.
Milligan said he’s concerned about what could happen after the November elections. The United States exists, he said, because of what people without representation did when they were pushed to a line.
“I think it's going to be really important for civic leaders who believe that they're in the center – they're going to have to really be playing some peacemaker roles,” he said.
