On Tuesday, a three-judge federal court issued a new injunction that again blocks Alabama from using an unconstitutionally racist district map in the 2026 congressional elections. The unanimous court, which includes two Trump appointees, emphasized that it “carefully reviewed the extensive evidentiary record” with “fresh eyes,” in order to accord with the Supreme Court’s latest anti-voter decision. And even so, the lower court said, “we cannot see our way clear” to forcing Alabamians to vote “under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
Back in 2023, this same three-judge panel blocked this same discriminatory map—temporarily, while a lawsuit challenging the map’s legality was pending—and imposed a remedial map for use in Alabama’s next election. In 2024, under the court-ordered map, Alabama elected two Black candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in history.
Then, in 2025, after an 11-day trial with testimony from more than 50 witnesses, the court unanimously concluded that, with the original map, Alabama’s Republican-led legislature had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by attempting to “rob Black Alabamians of an equal opportunity under the law to elect candidates of their choice.” The three-judge panel emphasized that it was “painfully aware” of the gravity of that conclusion, but the issue was not “particularly complex or close.” Ultimately, the court ordered Alabama to continue using the remedial map it imposed in 2023 for the rest of the ten-year Census cycle.
To comply with the lower court’s decision in this case, Caster v. Allen, Alabama started administering its 2026 elections with the remedial map. Thousands of Alabamians have already cast their ballots under the map, which at this point has been in place for years. But two weeks ago, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s ruling, swapping out the remedial map for the never-used unconstitutional map during the current, ongoing 2026 election. In a one-paragraph order, the justices sent the matter back to the district court for further consideration in light of Louisiana v. Callais, last month’s decision killing off the Voting Rights Act.
As a reminder, the district court held that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment are two different laws, the liberal justices dissented. And, writing for the dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor stressed that the three-judge panel “remains free” to make its own evaluation as to whether Callais has “any bearing” on its earlier constitutional analysis.
On Tuesday, the district court exercised that freedom. “Our previous review of the undisputed evidence left us in no doubt that Alabama’s legislatively enacted plan intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution,” the court wrote. “Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion.”
(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The panel’s decision should not be striking; it is, after all, a straightforward application of existing law. It is remarkable, however, during a political moment in which the Supreme Court’s Republican majority regularly upends the law, making it increasingly difficult for voters of color to exercise their right to participate in the political process, and for lower courts to vindicate those rights when they are violated. Most relevant here, the Supreme Court frequently frets over election timelines and makes excuses about legislatures’ partisan goals and good faith in order to protect laws that discriminate against voters of color. On Tuesday, the lower court systematically chipped away at each of those shields.
One of the most significant parts of the lower court’s decision is the way it dealt with the so-called “Purcell principle.” In theory, Purcell means that federal courts should not change voting rules “on the eve of an election” in order to minimize logistical burdens for the state and avoid confusing voters. In practice, Purcell means that it is never too late for a state (or the Supreme Court) to do something that hurts voters of color, but always too late for lower courts to help voters of color who have been hurt.
Getting out ahead of these concerns, the three-judge panel explained at length why Purcell poses no obstacle to its decision. Indeed, the court considered it “difficult to imagine a case where the facts more clearly counsel this conclusion.” The purported aim of the Purcell doctrine is to deter courts from muddying existing election rules. And while the Supreme Court’s orders in Callais and Caster changed “the legal status quo,” the remedial map remains “the practical status quo on the ground in Alabama.” The lower court determined that switching to the unconstitutional map during an election would be “enormously disruptive” and “perhaps logistically impossible,” and all in service of an undertaking that is “clearly unlawful” and “not necessary.”
Furthermore, the lower court found that Alabamians “were not confused” until the Supreme Court intervened, and that blocking the map would “improve the administrative situation in Alabama, not worsen it.” And in any event, the court said, confusion cannot override “a clearcut right to relief from an intentionally discriminatory map.”
In addition to reiterating its earlier constitutional holding, the lower court’s May 26 order found that Alabama Republicans’ redistricting plan likely violates the Voting Rights Act, too, even under the stringent new standard that the Supreme Court created in Callais. Under that test, states are only liable under the VRA if the facts give rise to a “strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.” State lawmakers can also defeat such inferences by showing that their goals were “partisan” as opposed to “racial.”
Here, the court had already made an independent finding that intentional discrimination occurred, and Alabama could make no convincing showing to the contrary. The court’s exhaustive search of the record revealed “no evidence of a partisan motive” and “direct evidence of discriminatory intent.” The court concluded that “part of the applicable law has changed” but “the evidence has not,” and Alabama could not skirt the law “by way of revisionist history.”
Finally, the court turned to the Supreme Court’s command that judges presume legislatures are acting in “good faith.” The Court’s Republican majority has often cautioned judges against “demeaning” legislators by being too quick to accept plaintiffs’ claims of racial discrimination.
But here, the lower court emphasized that it reached its conclusion with “great reluctance and dismay and even greater restraint.” In order to give Alabama’s legislature “every benefit of the doubt,” the panel did not consider Alabama’s long and well-documented history of discriminating against Black people, and refrained from making assumptions about the quantity of racist bones in any given legislator’s body. Instead, the panel limited its examination to “what the Legislature did” and “what it said about why.” That evidence supported “only one inference”: that the purpose of the redistricting map was to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength with a “veneer of legislative regularity.” And the judges warned that if this record didn’t overcome the presumption, it may never be overcome at all.
Throughout the opinion, the three-judge panel underscored the egregiousness of the Alabama legislature’s conduct and the clarity of the law necessitating the court’s decision. The lower court clearly did not want to make this determination on Tuesday, but it recognized that it was “duty-bound” to again block Alabama from using the unconstitutional map. In doing so, it also showed the extent of the Supreme Court’s faithlessness to the law when it comes to the legal rights of voters of color.
