The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 20, 2026. Graeme Sloan | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of November’s midterm elections, the latest fallout from the court’s seismic voting rights ruling.The justices lifted a lower court’s decision that had blocked state Republicans’ preferred map as racially discriminatory and for illegally diluting the voting power of Black Alabamians.The politically conservative Southern state is expected to seek to revert to this previous map, which would drop the number of districts where Black voters comprise a majority, or near-majority, from two to one out of the state’s seven U.S. House districts. Use of the previous map could be beneficial to Republicans.The order was powered by the nine-member court’s conservative majority. The three liberal justices dissented and suggested that the lower court could reapply its judicial block to the Alabama Republicans’ preferred map.President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain their control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the midterm elections.Alabama is among a group of Republican-led states that has sought to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts and boost their party’s chances ahead of the elections following the Supreme Court’s ruling undercutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.In its landmark April 29 ruling, the court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative members, struck down an electoral map that had given Louisiana a second Black-majority U.S. congressional district. The redrawn map, the majority ruled, had relied too heavily on race in violation of the constitutional equal protection principle.Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Alabama immediately filed emergency motions asking the justices to allow it to revert to an older map with only a single majority-Black district.Alabama, where Black voters make up a quarter of the electorate, had been ordered by a lower court to use a map that includes two majority-Black districts out of seven. Both are held by Black Democrats.The lower court decided that a prior map had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and unlawfully diluted their voting power.Alabama officials had argued in Supreme Court filings that …
