By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, May 27 (Reuters) - Alabama officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to let the state use a pro-Republican congressional map erasing one of its two districts where Black voters comprise a majority or near-majority, as President Donald Trump's party fights to keep control of Congress in November's midterm elections.
The request followed a lower court's decision on Tuesday to block the latest effort by state officials to put in place a redrawn map that aims to flip
a U.S. House of Representatives district currently held by a Black Democratic congressman to the Republicans.
Black voters typically support Democratic candidates. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in the House and Senate in the midterms.
Alabama Republicans asked the Supreme Court to lift the judicial block put in place on Tuesday by a federal three-judge panel that said the Republican-backed map intentionally discriminated against Black voters and could not be used for the 2026 elections.
The ruling was the latest development in a new and frenzied round of congressional redistricting that has unfolded across the South, as Republican-led states have scrambled to take advantage of an April Supreme Court decision that severely weakened the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law intended to prevent discrimination in voting.
Litigation over Alabama's congressional map has ricocheted between the Supreme Court and the federal three-judge panel in recent years.
Republican state legislators are trying to return to a map they approved in 2023 that the same three-judge panel previously had deemed discriminatory. That map would drop the number of districts where Black voters comprise a majority, or near-majority, from two to one out of the state's seven U.S. House districts. Black people make up about a quarter of Alabama's population.
On May 11, the Supreme Court granted the state's request to lift the lower court's prior ruling blocking Alabama from using the map.
In a dissent, the three liberal justices suggested that the three-judge panel could reapply its judicial block to Alabama Republicans' preferred map. The lower court's ruling on Tuesday did exactly that, prompting Alabama officials' filing to the Supreme Court.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
