On Monday, a three-judge federal court panel with two Trump appointees restored an Alabama congressional map with two majority-Black districts for the 2026 midterm elections, finding that another map recently green lit by the Supreme Court intentionally discriminated against Black voters.

The same panel had already concluded last year following a full trial that Alabama had discriminated against Black voters by refusing to create a new majority-Black congressional district after the Supreme Court ordered it to do so in its 2023 Allen v. Milligan decision. The high court’s conservative majority, however, abruptly reversed that order in the wake its April Louisiana v. Callais decision that gutted the Voting Right Act, and allowed Alabama to use a map with only one majority-Black district for November’s midterms, even though the state’s primary was only a week away and the three-judge panel had invalidated that map based on an exhaustive review of the evidence leading to the conclusion that the legislature had intentionally discriminated against Black voters. It asked the lower court to reevaluate its ruling in light of Callais.

But in a stunning rebuke of the Supreme Court, the panel, made up of three judges nominated by Republican presidents, reached the same conclusion it had before. “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 wrote in a unanimous opinion. “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 (the ‘2023 Plan’) intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution. Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion.”

The panel reaffirmed intentional racial discrimination, writing “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”

In Callais, the Roberts Court majority feigned moderation. It called its revision of past precedent an “update” and promised that Section 2 of the VRA, which required that racial minorities have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, is still good law—but now in a narrower set of circumstances. But the new standards the opinion set, combined with the six-three Republican majority’s........

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