The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Alabama Republicans a significant victory in the state’s ongoing battle over congressional redistricting, allowing Alabama to use a map that eliminates one of its two majority-minority congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In a 6-3 emergency order, the Court granted Alabama’s request to implement the map adopted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2023, reversing a lower court ruling that had blocked its use. The decision clears the way for Alabama to conduct this year’s elections under a map more favorable to Republicans and puts Rep. Shomari Figures’ (D-AL) seat in jeopardy for Democrats. The ruling marks the latest development in a years-long legal fight over Alabama’s congressional boundaries and comes just months after the Supreme Court issued a separate decision involving Louisiana that narrowed the scope of challenges brought under the Voting Rights Act. The unsigned majority opinion suggested Alabama is likely to prevail in the broader litigation and criticized the lower court for intervening so close to the election calendar. “Here, the District Court interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected,” the Court wrote. The decision drew a sharp dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.   WATCH FROM TODAY’S EPISODE OF MORNING WIRE:      Sotomayor argued that the Court was permitting elections to proceed under a map that lower courts had determined intentionally discriminated against black voters. She accused the majority of creating election-year chaos and rewarding Alabama for repeatedly resisting court orders. The dispute traces back to Alabama’s original post-2020 Census congressional map, which contained only one majority-black district despite black residents making up roughly a quarter of the state’s population. In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision finding that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and required Alabama to create an additional district in which black voters could elect their preferred candidate. That court-drawn district helped elect Figures, a Democrat, in 2024. Following the Supreme Court’s Louisiana ruling in April, Alabama Republicans argued that states should receive greater deference when drawing districts based on political rather than racial considerations. State officials subsequently moved to revive the legislature’s preferred map, triggering the latest round of litigation. The ruling carries implications beyond Alabama. With Republicans holding only a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, both parties have increasingly turned to mid-decade redistricting as they prepare for the 2026 midterms. The Alabama decision gives Republicans an opportunity to reclaim a seat currently held by Democrats and may encourage similar redistricting efforts in other Southern states. The case also represents another chapter in the Supreme Court’s ongoing effort to redefine the relationship between race and redistricting. For decades, courts have grappled with competing demands from one side of the aisle that states avoid diluting minority voting power, while the other demanded avoiding unconstitutional race-based districting. Tuesday’s ruling signals that the Court’s conservative majority remains willing to give states greater latitude when pursuing political objectives through redistricting, even when those decisions affect minority representation. Alabama’s congressional primaries are scheduled for August 11.