WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court vacated Alabama’s current congressional map May 11, 2026, despite ongoing voting in the state’s primary election, prompting criticism from voting rights advocates who argue the decision threatens protections for Black voters, according to a May 12 press release from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Court’s order follows the Supreme Court’s “devastating and profoundly flawed” decision in Louisiana v. Callais (2026), which narrowed protections under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and prompted the Court to reconsider issues related to Allen v. Milligan (2023).
The Milligan plaintiffs challenged Alabama’s 2021 congressional map, arguing that it unlawfully diluted Black voting power by maintaining only one majority-Black district despite the state’s one-third Black population, according to the Allen v. Milligan case brief.
In its 2023 decision, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling finding that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it provided Black voters with fewer opportunities “‘to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.’” The Court stated that the question of whether Alabama’s map violated Section 2 “‘was not a close one.’ It did.”
According to the ACLU press release, the district court ordered the implementation of a new court-drawn map, which was used during the 2024 elections and is currently being used in Alabama’s 2026 primary elections.
The Supreme Court’s April 29, 2026, decision in Louisiana v. Callais narrowed the protections of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate — and ruled that the burden of proof should focus primarily on evidence of “intentional racial discrimination.”
The ACLU argues that the order seeks to invalidate the current Alabama congressional map and opens the possibility that it could be replaced with another racially discriminatory map.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision, the plaintiffs in the Milligan case filed a motion requesting a temporary restraining order to keep the current court-ordered map in place.
The plaintiffs argue that the current map should remain because voting has already begun and the Supreme Court’s order is contrary to longstanding precedent forbidding changes to election rules too close to an election, which they say would create chaos for Alabama election officials and voters.
According to the ACLU, the Callais decision did not eliminate constitutional claims involving intentional racial discrimination. The organization argued that the district court’s prior finding that Alabama lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Black voters “remains wholly untouched,” making the Alabama proceeding different from Callais.
The plaintiffs — Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letetia Jackson, Shalela Dowdy, Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, who are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Alabama, Hogan Lovells and Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb — issued the following statement: “The Supreme Court’s action is the latest in a pattern of decisions that undermine the rights of Black voters…who have been denied equal rights at every turn.”
The plaintiffs also claimed, “The Supreme Court’s order… paves the way for Alabama to implement an extreme gerrymandered map that violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act” and challenges a decision issued less than three years ago.
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