At the Supreme Court, it was a quiet Monday—the kind that doesn’t typically carry the weight of a state’s political future. Nevertheless, the conservative majority returned Alabama the congressional map that a lower court had previously deemed to be purposefully discriminatory in a single unsigned order that was issued just minutes after a final brief appeared on the docket. There is no vote count. No justification. Years of litigation were quietly undone in just one paragraph.
The timing seemed almost surreal to anyone who has been following the Milligan case since 2021. In Alabama, voters were already using the court-mandated map that had been in place since 2023 to cast ballots for the primary on May 19. Now the rules had changed in the middle of an election. As this develops, there’s a feeling that the nation’s redistricting disputes have moved into an unfamiliar, quicker stage where Supreme Court interventions come with the urgency of breaking news rather than the consideration of constitutional law.
Within hours, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall posted on social media, claiming that the state’s long-standing stance was validated. His tone, which was almost joyous, encapsulated something that has been developing in Republican legal circles for some time. Conservative-led states acted swiftly after the Louisiana v. Callais decision in late April severely damaged Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In an attempt to secure advantages prior to the November midterms, Texas, Alabama, and even Virginia have rushed maps back into action.
Within a day, the plaintiffs—represented by the ACLU and the Legal Defense Fund—returned to the district court to request a temporary restraining order. Their case rests on a more subdued but unyielding fact: the district court had invalidated more than just the 2023 map under Section 2. Additionally, it concluded that Black voters had been the target of deliberate discrimination by Alabama’s legislature. They contend that Callais has not addressed that conclusion. Given the new political pressure from above, it remains to be seen if the lower court concurs.
In voting cases, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has become known for her sharp dissent. She warned of confusion among Alabama voters and election officials, calling the order inappropriate. The pattern she outlined of a majority “unceremoniously” rejecting lower court rulings without justification is difficult to ignore. The procedural oddity here is real, regardless of whether you agree with her interpretation. In the past, courts made a special effort to avoid mid-election map changes.
The practical confusion is already beginning to take hold outside Washington’s marble columns. Materials are being reprinted by counties. Candidates who had focused their campaigns on one map now have to deal with another. Many of the volunteers working in local elections are answering calls for which they have no clear answers. One of the initial plaintiffs, Greater Birmingham Ministries, has spent years organizing voters in the impacted districts, and now their employees are frantically trying to explain what no one really understands.
It’s still unclear what this means for November. Whichever map survives the next 72 hours of legal action will probably be used for Alabama’s primary, but the more general question of whether the Voting Rights Act still has teeth lingers. The Milligan plaintiffs were upheld by the same court three years prior. The earth beneath them has changed now. You get the impression from watching this that voting law in the United States is in its infancy and that no one, not even the justices, is completely certain of where it will go.
