Justice Clarence Thomas on Wednesday refused to immediately halt a lower court order blocking Alabama's new congressional map, dealing the state a setback in its bid to get the redistricting fight back before the Supreme Court.
The move left in place a ruling that says Alabama must keep using the court-ordered districts that were in place for the 2024 election, instead of switching to the map first drawn up in 2023. The question now is whether Alabama can win broader Supreme Court relief in time for the 2026 elections, when election planning is already underway.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a press release that the dispute had been muddled by the judges, not voters. He argued that the state’s conservative electorate should be able to elect conservative representation, calling that democracy rather than an attack on it. That was the map Alabama wanted the court to let it use while it kept pressing its case.
A federal three-judge panel issued the preliminary injunction on Tuesday after attorneys for Black voters argued the planned map was intentionally discriminatory. The judges wrote that they could not see their way clear to forcing Alabamians to vote in 2026 under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.
Thomas, who has long been skeptical of Voting Rights Act limits on redistricting, did not immediately give Alabama the relief it wanted. The refusal mattered because plans had already been put in place to hold primaries using the proposed map, and the state had asked for urgent action as the calendar moved closer to next year’s elections.
The Alabama redistricting case has been bouncing between the legislature, the district court and the Supreme Court since 2021. The high court issued a landmark ruling in 2023 that affirmed the ban on the new map under the Voting Rights Act, then an April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais changed how Section 2 should be applied and sent the case back to the district court a few weeks ago. Sauer, the Trump administration solicitor general, said the district court had paid only lip service to separating race and politics and criticized the injunction as arriving deep in the election calendar.
What happens next is now back in the justices’ hands. Wednesday’s refusal was not a final answer, but it left Alabama waiting while the court decides whether the 2026 elections will be run under the old lines or under the map the state has been fighting to use.
