Red State Asks Supreme Court to Approve New Congressional Map

The battle over congressional redistricting intensified again this week after the state of Alabama formally asked the Supreme Court of the United States to allow Republicans to use a congressional map containing just one majority-Black district instead of a court-imposed map that created two such districts.

The request marks the latest major front in the nationwide redistricting war that is rapidly reshaping the political battlefield ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

In filings submitted to the Supreme Court, Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre argued that forcing the state to use the court-ordered map would improperly require Alabama to conduct elections under a racially driven districting system that may itself violate the Constitution.

“Hold elections under a map that was erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst. Nothing requires that result,” Bowdre wrote.

“Americans, no less in Alabama, deserve a republic free of racial sorting now, and state officials deserve an opportunity to give it to them,” he added.

The Alabama appeal comes just weeks after the Supreme Court issued a major ruling significantly narrowing how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 can be used to justify race-based congressional districts.

Republicans across the South have quickly moved to capitalize on the ruling, arguing that districts intentionally designed around race violate constitutional equal protection principles and unfairly prioritize identity politics over geographic and political representation.

The legal shift is already fueling major Republican momentum nationwide in the escalating congressional redistricting battle.

Current projections suggest Republicans could potentially gain up to 14 additional House seats through redistricting efforts before the midterms, while Democrats are projected to gain roughly six seats through their own map changes in blue-controlled states.

Republican gains currently include:

Ohio: +2 GOP seats
Missouri: +1 GOP seat
Tennessee: +1 GOP seat
North Carolina: +1 GOP seat
Florida: +4 GOP seats
Texas: +5 GOP seats

Democratic gains currently include:

California: +5 Democratic seats
Utah: +1 Democratic seat

Republicans are also pursuing additional possible gains in South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi following the Supreme Court’s latest voting-rights decision.

The fight over Alabama’s congressional map comes amid a broader Republican push across Southern states to redraw districts previously shaped under older Voting Rights Act interpretations.

Just days ago, Tennessee Republicans approved a new congressional map that eliminated the state’s only Democrat-held majority-Black district, creating an entirely Republican congressional delegation.

Political analysts say the cumulative effect of these changes could significantly strengthen Republicans’ ability to hold or expand their narrow House majority in 2026.

At the same time, Democrats continue suffering setbacks in several key legal battles involving their own redistricting efforts.

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down a Democrat-backed congressional map that would have heavily favored Democrats in one of the nation’s most politically competitive states.

In a 4-3 ruling, the Virginia court concluded that Democratic lawmakers violated constitutional procedures when placing the redistricting amendment before voters earlier this year.

“On March 6, 2026, the General Assembly of Virginia submitted to Virginia voters a proposed constitutional amendment that authorizes partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts in the Commonwealth,” the court wrote.

“We hold that the legislative process employed to advance this proposal violated Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia. This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the ruling continued.

The court also referenced Virginia voters’ earlier efforts to limit partisan gerrymandering after reforms passed in 2020 created the Virginia Redistricting Commission.

“Virginians voted by a wide margin” in 2020 “to reform the redistricting process in the Commonwealth in an effort to end partisan gerrymandering,” the opinion noted.

The justices sharply criticized the Democratic-backed congressional map itself, arguing the districts appeared engineered to produce extreme partisan advantages disconnected from actual statewide voting patterns.

“Under the proposed new map, approximately 47% of Virginians that voted for representatives of one of the major political parties in the last congressional election would now be represented by 9% of Virginia’s delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives — while the approximately 51% of Virginians that voted for the other major political party would now be represented by 91% of Virginia’s congressional delegation,” the court wrote.

The ruling represented another major victory for Republicans in what is becoming one of the most aggressive and consequential redistricting battles in modern American politics.

With fewer than 16 congressional seats nationwide currently viewed as competitive, both parties increasingly recognize that control of the House may depend less on persuasion campaigns and more on who controls the map-drawing process itself.