Alabama Legislature begins special session to redraw Congressional district lines

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WAKA) – A special session of the Alabama Legislature is underway, as Republican lawmakers take steps to redraw the state’s Congressional district lines, if the U.S. Supreme Court allows the state to do so.

Alabama is one of several states that could change Congressional districts before the November elections. This is happening because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week involving Louisiana, which has prompted several Republican-led states to say that decision should apply to their own states.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Black-majority Congressional district in Louisiana on the grounds that race was too large of a factor in how it had been drawn up. Three years ago, the federal courts rejected Alabama’s Congressional district map that had been drawn up by the legislature following the 2020 Census. Instead, the courts created its own map in order to give Black Alabama voters a greater chance of electing a second Black U.S. Representative. In 2024, Black Democrat Shomari Figures of Mobile was elected to represent Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District.

Republicans in the Alabama Legislature are hoping to return to the original map that they had passed. If that happens, Figures would be vulnerable in his re-election bid. Currently, his district includes part of Mobile, all of Montgomery and stretches east to west across the state.

However, when the courts drew up the new map that led to Figures’ election, it barred the Alabama Legislature from making any changes before the 2030 Census. State Republican leaders are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow them to take action now and not wait until then.

“We’re here to preserve the option to go back to the maps that this elected body passed overwhelmingly in both chambers and the governor signed into law,” Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Baldwin County) told Action 8 News.

“We should not be here,” Sen. Bobby Singleton (D-Greensboro), who is also senate minority leader, said. “The court has already ruled what it’s going to do in these particular cases. Now the State of Alabama is trying to get ahead just because they’ve been told by the president of the United States to go out and do some redistricting.”

Louisiana is in the process of changing its districts following last week’s decision. Tennessee lawmakers will go into their own session tomorrow to start the same process.

Civil rights activists are protesting these efforts, saying they have gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and will threaten the seats that Black lawmakers currently hold. They held a rally outside the Alabama State House this afternoon. Several hundred protesters carried signs declaring “No new map” and “We fight back! Black Voters Matter.”

Last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana has unleashed “a wave of nefarious actions” across states that threatens to disenfranchise Black voters, Alanah Odoms, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said Monday.

President Trump says redistricting could help Republicans gain 20 seats in the U.S. House in November. One southern state that is not participating in these efforts is South Carolina. Gov. Henry McMaster’s office said the Republican governor would not call a special session of that state’s legislature to redraw the state’s only Democratic-occupied House seat.

The high court’s ruling said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling significantly altered a decades-old understanding of the law and provided grounds for Republicans in various states to try to eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Democrats to Congress.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn only once a decade, after a census, to account for population changes. But Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw U.S. House districts to give the party an advantage. Democrats in California responded by doing the same, and then other states joined in, involving both political parties trying to gain an advantage in Washington.

Today, Florida became the eighth state to enact new House districts ahead of midterm elections, as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he had signed a redrawn map passed by lawmakers last week that could help Republicans win as many as four additional House seats. The new map was immediately challenged in court as a partisan gerrymander that violates a state constitutional provision against drawing districts that favor one political party over another.

(Copyright 2026 The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)