Attorney General Marshall Fights for Alabama, Asks Supreme Court to Block Race-Based Congressional Map Before May 19 Primary

For Immediate Release:
May 8, 2026

For press inquiries only, contact:
Amanda Priest (334) 322-5694
William Califf (334) 604-3230

(Montgomery, Ala.) – Attorney General Steve Marshall today asked the United States Supreme Court to lift a federal court order requiring Alabama to use a race-based congressional map in the upcoming May 19 primary. The filings argue that the order in place directly conflicts with the Supreme Court’s ruling last month in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that clarified the rules for how courts must assess challenges brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to congressional redistricting. The State is asking the Court to act by May 14, five days before Alabamians go to the polls.

“I will continue to fight for Alabama to be able to use the congressional map the people’s elected representatives enacted,” Attorney General Marshall said. “Alabama drew a map based on lawful policy goals, not race, and the Supreme Court’s recent ruling vindicates that approach. We were punished for doing the right thing, and we are asking the Court to correct that now.”

The dispute goes back to Alabama’s 2023 congressional map, which the State drew after an earlier map was challenged in court. The 2023 map was designed around three geographic communities—the Gulf Coast, the Black Belt, and the Wiregrass region—keeping each one united within as few congressional districts as possible. A federal court struck down that map in 2025, finding it violated the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution because it did not include a new majority-minority district. The court replaced it with a map drawn by a court-appointed special master, which remains in place today pursuant to court orders.

Alabama argues the lower court got it wrong, and that the Supreme Court’s recent Callais decision confirms it. In Callais, the Supreme Court ruled that when challengers propose an alternative congressional map, it must accomplish everything the state’s own map was designed to do. Alabama says none of the alternative maps proposed by the plaintiffs here met that standard, and the lower court acknowledged as much before it nonetheless sided with the plaintiffs. The State also argues the lower court wrongly concluded that Alabama had acted with discriminatory intent simply because it chose to draw a race-neutral map.

Today’s filings are the latest and most urgent step in Attorney General Marshall’s ongoing effort to restore Alabama’s congressional map. On April 30, Marshall asked the Supreme Court to vacate the lower court’s injunctions and send the cases back to be reconsidered in light of Callais. On May 5, he filed a separate emergency motion at the district court level asking that court to lift its own orders while the appeals play out. Today’s emergency applications go directly to Justice Clarence Thomas and ask the Supreme Court to immediately halt the lower court’s order imposing a court-drawn map on Alabama for the May 19 primary. Separately, Marshall has also been fighting to restore Alabama’s state Senate map, filing an emergency motion with the Eleventh Circuit on May 4 and a reply brief on May 7 in that parallel proceeding.

You can read the full briefs here, here and here. 

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