Allen v. Caster

Alabama's congressional map has been in federal court almost continuously since the legislature passed it after the 2020 census. The fight started with a simple disparity: Black residents make up roughly 27 percent of Alabama's population, but the legislature drew only one majority-Black district out of seven. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, codified at 52 U.S.C. § 10301, bars voting practices that result in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race.

For four decades, courts applied Section 2 through the framework Justice William Brennan set out in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). Under Gingles, a minority group challenging a district map has to show three things: the group is large and compact enough to form a majority in a reasonably drawn district, the group votes cohesively, and white voters vote as a bloc consistently enough to defeat the minority group's preferred candidate. That test had been the baseline of redistricting litigation since 1986.

A three-judge panel in the Northern District of Alabama found Alabama's 2021 map likely violated Section 2 and ordered a remedial drawing. The Supreme Court granted Alabama's stay application, then took up the merits in Allen v. Milligan and affirmed 5-4 in June 2023. It was the first time in decades the Court had enforced Section 2 to require a state to draw an additional majority-minority district.

Alabama's response was defiant.

Secretary of State Wes Allen's office passed a revised 2023 map that the state's own attorneys acknowledged didn't create a second majority-Black district. The district court rejected it as noncompliant and drew its own remedial map for the 2024 elections. That map produced a second Black-opportunity district, and Shomari Figures won it — becoming the first Black representative from Alabama's 2nd Congressional District in decades.

Allen v. Caster reached the Supreme Court in May 2026 after the district court, on remand, again found the 2023 map violated both Section 2 and the Fourteenth Amendment. The court found Alabama intentionally diluted Black voters' votes — an independent constitutional finding, not just a statutory one. The Supreme Court vacated the injunction and remanded in light of Louisiana v. Callais (2026), which added a requirement that Section 2 plaintiffs control their statistical models for partisan preference before inferring racial bloc voting.

Three justices pushed back hard. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson argued the Court's order didn't just wipe out the Section 2 ruling — it swept aside the independent Fourteenth Amendment finding of intentional racial discrimination too, a constitutional question Callais didn't address.