In a lengthy ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala struck down Jefferson County’s 2021 commission map under the Fourteenth Amendment and barred its use in future elections.

The court found that “race predominated in the Commission’s revisions to its five districts following the 2020 census,” after a four-day bench trial, concluding, “The Commission has not attempted to make this showing in this case… Therefore, the Court finds that the Commission’s 2021 plan violates the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Haikala’s opinion targeted racial concentrations under the 2021 plan — black voting age populations of 75% in District 1, 63% in District 2, and 26%, 26%, 13% in Districts 3-5 — and argues a “surplus” of Black votes were packed beyond what was necessary to elect black-preferred candidates.

The order enjoins the county from using the map in future elections — however, the ruling is ripe for appeal on a variety of bases.

The decision arrives just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court re-hears Louisiana v. Callais — a case the justices have reframed to ask “whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.”

At that time, the high court could tackle two seismic questions: whether and how states may consider race when crafting remedial maps, and even whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act’s “results test” remains fully constitutional.

That such test was the backbone of Allen vs. Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision that required Alabama to add an additional majority-black congressional district to the map drawn by state lawmakers in 2021.

Alabama’s State Senate district lines also hang in the balance. Last month, a federal judge blocked the current plan for 2026, directing lawmakers to draw a new majority-black district in the Montgomery area.

All of this could be reshaped in the coming weeks.

The U.S. Supreme Court has October 15 set as the date justices will re-hear the Louisiana redistricting case, which would directly affect Alabama’s congressional, legislative, and now, even county-level remedies.

Judge Madeline Haikala, who issued this week’s redistricting mandate for Jefferson County, was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2013.