Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called a special session of the state Legislature for Monday, moving to redraw congressional and state senate district maps that federal courts had blocked, a direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision this week that gutted a key enforcement tool of the Voting Rights Act.
The move sets up a high-stakes confrontation over Alabama's May 19 primary. If the Supreme Court lifts an existing injunction, the Republican-controlled Legislature could revert to maps that would reshape the state's 2nd Congressional District, a seat currently held by a Black Democrat, and alter at least two state senate districts in the Montgomery area.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a motion Thursday asking the Supreme Court to dissolve the injunction that has barred the state from redrawing its congressional map before 2030. Marshall's argument rests on the Court's Wednesday ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana and made it considerably harder for plaintiffs to challenge maps as racially discriminatory under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Marshall framed the request in plain terms. In a statement reported by the Alabama Reflector, the attorney general said:
"Because the lower court's injunction cannot stand in light of the Supreme Court's ruling, we have asked the court to lift the injunction. Alabama deserves the right to use its own maps, just like every other state."
Ivey, for her part, had said just hours after the Callais decision Wednesday that she would not convene a special session. By Friday, she reversed course.
The governor's call for Monday's session would trigger special elections "in districts whose boundary lines are altered by a court issuing a judgment, vacating an injunction, or otherwise ordering or permitting an alteration in the boundaries of such districts." That language leaves the session contingent on what the Supreme Court does with Marshall's motion, a ruling that had not come as of early Friday afternoon.
Ivey acknowledged the uncertainty but said she wanted the state ready to act. She stated:
"By calling the Legislature into a special session, I am ensuring Alabama is prepared should the courts act quickly enough to allow Alabama's previously drawn congressional and state senate maps to be used during this election cycle."
If the injunction is lifted, Alabama would revert to the congressional map the Legislature approved in a 2023 special session and the state senate map drawn in 2021. Both were previously rejected by federal courts as violations of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Callais, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, changed the legal landscape those maps were judged under.
The stakes are concrete. The 2nd Congressional District currently has a near-majority Black population. The Legislature's 2023 version of that district would have reduced the Black population to less than 40 percent. U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat from Mobile, currently holds the seat.
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican from Rainsville, and Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger, a Republican from Cullman, issued a joint statement that did not mince words about the goal. They said the Legislature would prepare a contingency plan for the primary elections and added:
"While there are no guarantees that Alabama's now unlawful, court mandated roadblock will be removed in time, we have a responsibility to give our state a fighting chance to send seven Republican members to Congress."
Alabama currently sends six Republicans and one Democrat to the U.S. House. In 2024, the state elected two Black U.S. representatives in the same election, a first in its 200-year history, under the court-ordered maps that the Legislature now wants to discard. Black Alabamians make up 27 percent of the state's population.
Ivey reinforced the state-sovereignty argument in her own statement. She said Alabama "knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activists group."
That framing, the state's elected Legislature versus unelected judges and outside advocacy groups, is the core of the Republican case. And it now has a Supreme Court majority behind it, at least on the legal question of how far Section 2 can reach.
The opposition was swift and sharp. Figures said Friday he "fully expected" Republicans to make this move and pointed to the judicial record:
"The judges unanimously found that the State of Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters when they drew the district maps after the 2020 census and subsequently refused to follow court orders to correct the issue. Now, the state is essentially asking the courts to close their eyes and forget what they already saw."
Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, now a Democratic candidate for Alabama governor, called the special session a "power grab." Jones said in a statement:
"This attempt at voter suppression is an affront to all those who have fought so hard for voting rights in Alabama and across America. The Callais decision has emboldened those who are too afraid to compete for votes to gerrymander their way into even greater power."
Jerome Dees, Alabama state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, warned that the nonprofit would defend the voting rights of Black Alabamians if lawmakers proceed. He said any effort to revive the old maps "would likely target Alabama's Black state and federal representatives" and remains "discriminatory regardless of the Louisiana v. Callais decision."
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, went further, saying Alabama was "once again trying to move the goalposts to suit its own partisan interests." She called Marshall's filing a "transparent attempt to subvert the rule of law" and warned that granting it "would be a head-spinning reversal of precedent and a direct assault on the fairness of our elections."
Alabama is not acting in isolation. As the Associated Press reported, the Callais ruling has triggered a fast-moving national redistricting fight. Republican-led states including Florida, Tennessee, and Mississippi have already taken or prepared legal and legislative action to redraw maps before the midterm elections.
Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature approved new U.S. House districts within hours of the ruling, a move that could help Republicans gain up to four additional seats in November, the Washington Times reported. Mississippi's governor had already planned a special session to redraw state Supreme Court voting districts. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said his state owed it to voters "to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters."
The combined effect could reshape the partisan balance of the U.S. House. Newsmax noted that the total number of seats in play could grow as more states move to apply the Callais framework to existing court orders and consent decrees.
That broader context matters for understanding what is happening in Alabama. This is not a rogue governor acting alone. It is one piece of a coordinated Republican effort to reclaim redistricting authority that courts had taken away under a legal standard the Supreme Court has now substantially rewritten.
The Alabama redistricting saga stretches back years. In January 2022, a three-judge federal panel ruled that the congressional map the Alabama Legislature approved in 2021 violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in June 2023 in Allen v. Milligan.
The following month, Ivey convened a special session. The Legislature approved a new map, but it still contained only one majority-Black district. The lower court rejected it again. The Supreme Court upheld that rejection too, and a court-appointed special master drew the map currently in use.
Under those court-ordered maps, Alabama elected Figures and a second Black representative in 2024. Now the state wants to go back to the maps the courts threw out, armed with a new Supreme Court precedent that says the legal basis for those earlier rulings was wrong.
The broader political implications of the Callais decision are already visible. What was once settled law, that states must draw majority-minority districts where racially polarized voting exists, is now contested terrain. And states like Alabama are not waiting to see how the dust settles.
The Legislature meets Monday. Whether it can act on redistricting depends entirely on the Supreme Court. If the justices lift the injunction, the previously drawn maps go into effect and at least a handful of districts face moved primaries. If the Court does not act, or acts slowly, the special session could amount to nothing more than a contingency exercise.
Several questions remain unanswered. Which districts beyond the 2nd Congressional District and the 25th and 26th Senate districts would see altered boundaries? What is the precise text of Marshall's filing? And will the Court act before the May 19 primary makes the question moot?
The Supreme Court's procedural decisions have increasingly shaped policy outcomes in recent years, and this case may be another example. A ruling on Marshall's motion, or the absence of one, will determine whether Alabama voters go to the polls under maps drawn by their elected Legislature or maps drawn by a court-appointed master.
Robyn Hyden, executive director of Alabama Arise, called the Callais decision a "travesty" and urged voters to check their registration and polling places. She said the group would "stand on the front lines with voting rights advocates across our state to fight any maps that remove fair representation."
The Court's recent redistricting rulings have consistently moved in the direction of limiting federal intervention in state mapmaking. Alabama's leaders are betting that trend holds one more time.
For years, federal courts told Alabama it could not draw its own maps. The Supreme Court just told Louisiana the opposite. If the state's elected leaders want to take yes for an answer, it is hard to blame them for moving fast.
