A trio of federal judges is setting itself against the U.S. Supreme Court and ignoring a crucial ruling from the nation’s highest judicial authority as red states scramble to outdo blue states in a nationwide redistricting battle. The Supreme Court on May 11 struck down a series of lower court injunctions barring Alabama from using congressional district maps the Republican-led legislature had drawn in 2023. Those maps had originally been considered unconstitutional under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which effectively forced legislators and committees to draw congressional district boundaries to benefit ethnic minority groups.

In its monumental ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court determined that the practice is racially discriminatory and unconstitutional. Alabama promptly appealed the injunctions against the use of its 2023 maps, and the Supreme Court agreed that, under its recently set precedent, the injunctions had no constitutional basis and in fact enforced an unconstitutional mandate.

However, a three-judge federal panel on Tuesday ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling and again blocked Alabama from using its new district map, which the judges smeared as racist. “We now face a critical decision on a very tight timeline. We can either allow the Secretary of State to administer Alabama’s 2026 elections with a legislatively enacted districting plan that we found (after a full trial) intentionally discriminated against Black voters based on race in violation of the Constitution,” the judges wrote, “or we can issue a preliminary injunction two and a half months ahead of Alabama’s scheduled special primaries (and some five months before the general election), requiring the Secretary to administer the 2026 elections with the race-blind plan that he used” in the 2024 elections and in the 2026 primary elections. “We emphasize that because of the exceptional public importance of this matter, we carefully reviewed the extensive evidentiary record in these cases with fresh eyes in light of Callais.”

“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the judges concluded. “We do not lightly intrude in state affairs, but our previous review of the undisputed evidence left us in no doubt that Alabama’s legislatively enacted plan … intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution. Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion. We again cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than intentionally discriminatory.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) immediately announced his intention to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. “I am disappointed, but not at all surprised, that the three-judge panel has again struck down Alabama’s blandly unobjectionable congressional map that has been in place for decades,” he said in a statement. “I find nothing in the U.S. Supreme Court’s vacatur order of May 11 that would provide a basis for this outcome; thus, we will immediately appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.” He added, “Know this — in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when.”

Currently, Democrats hold two seats on Alabama’s congressional delegation, while Republicans hold five. The proposed new maps are expected to flip one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from blue to red.

Following President Donald Trump’s call-to-action last year, multiple Republican-led states have redrawn congressional district maps in a bid to bolster the GOP’s razor-thin House majority and keep Democrats from crippling Trump’s agenda in the latter half of his second term. While multiple states across the South have followed the Supreme Court’s VRA ruling with aggressive plans to eliminate Democrat-held House seats, Republicans in South Carolina’s state senate voted Tuesday to kill a redistricting measure. Republicans in Indiana’s state senate did the same late last year, earning the wrath of Trump and his allies, who successfully primaried and removed several from office earlier this year.