Two Southern states whose Republican-led legislatures had pushed for redrawn district maps to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts were stopped from doing so on Tuesday, at least temporarily foiling President Donald Trump’s relentless gerrymandering campaign.
In Alabama, a federal district court blocked the state from enacting its 2023 congressional map in the midterms, which would have left Black Alabamians with just one seat where they form a majority, down from two, reported Democracy Docket. The state has already appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the GOP-led South Carolina Senate voted Tuesday against advancing a new congressional map that eliminated the state’s single majority-Black district represented by longtime Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, the first Black member of Congress elected in the state since Reconstruction.
The South Carolina House had approved the map last week in hopes of putting it in place before this year’s midterm elections, in line with Trump’s aggressive push to pass new maps in Republican districts across the country to strengthen the party’s narrow House majority.
While Florida and Tennessee have quickly enacted new maps in recent weeks, South Carolina became the first Republican state to fail at passing a new map since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act last month. The effort collapsed when some Republicans in the state Senate balked, joining Democrats in arguing it was too late to enact new district lines.
“Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election that is already underway,” said Republican state Sen. Richard Cash, who changed his vote due to timing, reported NBC News.
Republican Redistricting Push Hits Major Roadblock
With the state legislature now in recess until June 10, the Republican effort to redraw the state’s congressional map to dismantle the state’s lone majority-Black district in time for the midterm elections is thwarted.
In a post on X Tuesday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said he was “confident that one day South Carolina’s congressional delegation will be completely Republican,” but that he was “disappointed that day has not yet come.”
A three-judge district court panel on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s effort to use a voting map crafted in 2023 for the November midterm elections, saying that the districts intentionally discriminated against Black people and could not be used so shortly before a vote. It ordered Alabama to use a court-approved map that includes two majority-Black districts for upcoming House elections.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a statement on the ruling, said, “Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans have failed the American people. As a result, the GOP has concluded that the only way they can win in November is to cheat.”
“Today, their desperate power grab hit a wall,” the New York Democrat said. “The Supreme Court must now do the right thing, if the state of Alabama seeks judicial sanction to violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The American people must be permitted to decide who gets to represent them in Congress, not Donald Trump.”
Alabama Appeals as Supreme Court Fight Looms
Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, immediately appealed on Wednesday to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create two majority-Black House districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
“Alabama and the public face irreparable harm unless a stay issues because they will be unable to use the State’s ‘duly enacted plans’ for the 2026 election,” Alabama officials wrote in the filing. “Worse still, voters will be forced to vote under a court-drawn, racially gerrymandered map that does not meet Alabama’s legitimate districting goals.”
They said the 2023 map “was lawful then, and it is lawful now.”
For the upcoming House elections, Republicans are hoping to flip a seat currently held by Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat, CBS News reported.
In anticipation of the three-year-old map being put in place, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, set a special primary election for Aug. 11 for the four House districts that would be redrawn under that plan.
If the Supreme Court takes up the Alabama case, it will be the first major test of the high court’s new standard for challenging congressional maps, observed The New York Times. The high court ruled 6-3 last month in Louisiana v. Callais that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require states to create congressional districts that provide minority voters with the opportunity to elect candidates in proportion to their overall population in the state. Instead, only overt racism was grounds for voiding a state’s congressional map.
The lower court judges in Alabama made clear that they had considered the arguments in light of the Supreme Court’s recent VRA ruling but found that the state’s map failed under the new standard by intentionally discriminating against Black voters.
Judges Say Alabama Map Intentionally Discriminated Against Black Voters
“We 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 of three judges wrote. It also warned against causing voters additional confusion by trying to use a new map before the November elections.
The court, the panel wrote, was “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, it added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or closed.”
Marshall, the attorney general, said he was “disappointed, but not at all surprised” by the ruling.
“Know this,” he added, “in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when.”
Since Trump began pushing Texas to redraw its maps last year to flip up to five districts currently held by Democrats, eight states have enacted new congressional maps. Six favor Republicans, and two favor Democrats. The ongoing redistricting battle could net an additional eight Republican seats ahead of the midterm elections this year, according to a Cook Political Report analysis.
With Georgia and Mississippi expected to redraw their congressional maps prior to the 2028 election cycle, the mid-decade redistricting wars will continue beyond the 2026 midterms.
