In a stunning act of political partisanship, the Roberts Court on Monday night discarded its own precedents to green-light a last-ditch effort by Alabama to use a gerrymandered congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The move, which comes less than two weeks after the court destroyed the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, will reduce Black representation.

Monday’s 6-3 order, divided along partisan lines, shows how Republican-controlled states can use the high court’s April 29 Callais decision as carte-blanche to shut Black representatives out of Congress. In Alabama’s case, precedent, court doctrine, and a damning lower-court ruling stood in the way of the state throwing out its current map containing two majority-Black congressional districts represented by Democrats. Monday night’s decision of the Republican-appointed justices to toss all that aside shows how the court has not only unleashed a new wave of racial and partisan gerrymandering, but is sweeping away any obstacles so that Republicans nab as many seats as possible this November—enough to potentially prevent Democrats from retaking the House.

“There’s something bizarre going on with the court making choices that seem to very heavily benefit one party.”

Since the 2020 census, the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature has been pushing for a map that would give Black voters, who comprise 27 percent of the state’s population, the ability to elect their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. But after Callais, Republican leaders of the state legislature have gone further and vowed to eliminate both of the state’s majority-Black districts, which would mean that the state that gave rise to the civil rights movement and was the home of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, the Birmingham church bombing, and Bloody Sunday in Selma would have no Black representation in Congress. The court’s Monday intervention puts the 6-1 map into effect, but leaves open the door for the legislature to attempt a 7-0 map, if not in time for this year’s elections, then in plenty of time for 2028.

Just last week, Chief Justice John Roberts gave a speech where he insisted the justices were not “political actors,” but the court’s last-minute intervention in favor of Alabama violates every norm the court claims to follow. “The rank disrespect of the Chief Justice coming out and warning people that they shouldn’t assume that the court is partisan tests basic credulity,” says Kareem Crayton, a redistricting expert at the Brennan........

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