Alabama Republicans are heading back to the Supreme Court yet again after a three-judge panel that included two Trump appointees ruled against the state’s congressional redistricting effort ahead of the midterm elections.  

The panel rendered its latest ruling Tuesday in response to an order from the high court earlier this month, which directed the panel to reconsider its previous action against the state. The justices split 6-3 along party lines in ordering that second look in light of the court’s April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the justices split 6-3 along those same lines in making it harder to bring claims under the Voting Rights Act.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the Democratic appointees in dissent from the order for further review in the Alabama litigation. She argued there was “no reason” for it because the lower court had previously found not only a Voting Rights Act violation but a direct violation of the Constitution via intentional discrimination against Black voters.

“That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” Sotomayor wrote May 11. She added that sending the case back for further review “will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote” in the state’s congressional primaries.

In its latest ruling Tuesday, the panel was mindful of the “very tight timeline” it was forced to rule on, noting it was 2 1/2 months ahead of Alabama’s scheduled special primaries and some five months before the general election. But the judges concluded that they “cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.” The panel rejected the state’s argument that Callais upended the intentional discrimination finding. In any event, the panel said, the Black voters in this case would likely separately satisfy the Supreme Court’s new Voting Rights Act test in Callais.

“We emphasize that because of the exceptional public importance of this matter, we carefully reviewed the extensive evidentiary record in these cases with fresh eyes in light of Callais,” the panel said. The three judges on the panel are Stanley Marcus, an appellate judge who was appointed to a district court by Ronald Reagan and then to the appellate court by Bill Clinton, as well as two district judges appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer.  

The state said in a court filing Tuesday that it’s appealing the panel’s preliminary injunction ruling to the Supreme Court.

When the high court’s Republican-appointed majority ordered further review of the Alabama map in light of Callais, it didn’t explain why or offer its view of how the separate intentional discrimination finding factors into the analysis. With the state heading back to the justices, that raises the questions of whether the majority will again provide emergency relief that would help Republicans this election season and how it will justify doing so, if it provides any explanation.

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