In the span of a single day, Alabama clawed two Montgomery-area State Senate seats back from a federal court’s race-based redraw.
On Thursday, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals froze the court-imposed map, and today, Governor Kay Ivey voided the May 19 primary results in Senate Districts 25 and 26, calling a new primary on the state’s lawfully enacted 2021 lines.
The latest development in an ongoing Alabama redistricting fight hands Attorney General Steve Marshall and State Sen. Will Barfoot (R-Pike Road) a huge victory – and signaling that the days of the judge-ordered redraw could be numbered.
“Alabama continues winning fair and square in our redistricting battle, and I am proud to celebrate yet another victory for Alabamians and our elections. In this case, we are talking about Alabamians in State Senate Districts 25 and 26,” Governor Ivey said in a statement.
“I can tell you this: Alabama is not tired of winning,” Ivey added.
In a 2-1 decision, a merits panel of the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted Alabama’s motion to stay the injunctions that had blocked the state from using its lawfully enacted 2021 State Senate map and forced the state to run its elections under a remedial plan drawn by a federal special master.
The two judges in the majority, Trump appointees Elizabeth Branch and Robert Luck, went further than interim relief, writing that “when briefing is done, we will likely do as the Supreme Court has done” and vacate the injunction outright.
For Barfoot, the ruling effectively gives him the best chance of retaining his duly-elected seat in the Alabama Legislature.
As Yellowhammer News has extensively reported, the court-imposed map took aim at his Montgomery-area Senate District 25, a seat President Trump carried 64-36 in 2024, and transformed it into one Kamala Harris would have won by double digits, ballooning the Black voting-age population from roughly 29% to 51%.
The redraw forced Barfoot to announce he would run one district over, in District 26, rather than cede a conservative Elmore County seat to a Democrat. He called the orders “badly flawed rulings that make no sense” and accused the federal courts of racially gerrymandering the lines to tilt the seat toward liberal Democrats.
As stated, the ruling now allows Barfoot to retain his current seat, at least for now.
In ruling on the Secretary of State’s appeal of the injunction, the first burden the Secretary had to prove was that the court “should vacate the injunctions in light of Louisiana v. Callais.” The court succinctly held, “He’s made a strong showing that we should.”
The court based this finding on the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a string of decisions following Callais that vacated similar lower court rulings and remanded them for re-trial consistent with the new higher-court precedent.
This means that the State Senate map will eventually go back to the lower court, Judge Anna Manasco, who sits on the panel that just recently again ruled against Alabama in its congressional map litigation, despite Callais.
So, while Barfoot is now currently running in his usual seat, that may change once the court officially vacates the injunction and remands for retrial by Manasco.
While this is a temporary victory for champions of Alabama’s redistricting efforts, it also once again hands the issue back to Manasco.
Carter Ashcraft is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News. He is a graduate of The University of Alabama, a rising law student, and has worked professionally across roles in Alabama state government. He can be reached at [email protected].
