People talk about redistricting as if it were a political sport. A new census drops, lines move, and the party in charge tries to lock in power for a decade.
Allen v. Milligan (2023) is what happens when that game runs into a federal statute that still has sharp edges. The case did not ask whether partisan gerrymandering is unfair. It asked a narrower, older, and more legally enforceable question: when a state draws districts, did it dilute minority voting strength in a way the Voting Rights Act forbids?
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The basic story
Alabama redraws its congressional map after the 2020 census
After the 2020 census, Alabama had to redraw its seven U.S. House districts. The Legislature adopted a map in 2021 that maintained one district where Black voters could reliably elect their preferred candidates, while the remaining districts were drawn so Black voters were not similarly positioned elsewhere.
Black Alabamians made up about 27 percent of Alabama’s total population in the 2020 Census. Yet under the 2021 plan, only one of seven districts was set up in a way that typically allowed Black voters, as a group, to elect their candidate of choice.
The lawsuit: a Section 2 vote dilution claim
Several groups of voters challenged the map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The plaintiffs argued the plan unlawfully diluted Black voting power by packing Black voters into one district and cracking others across multiple districts, given the state’s voting patterns.
Section 2 does not require proportional representation. It does not guarantee that a group will win seats in proportion to its population share.
What it does forbid is a voting system or districting plan that, under the “totality of circumstances,” leaves minority voters with less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
What the lower court did
A three-judge federal district court heard the case, applied longstanding Supreme Court precedent, and concluded the plaintiffs were likely to succeed. The court issued a preliminary injunction requiring Alabama to draw a plan with a second district in which Black voters would have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates, describing the benchmark as a district where Black voters would be a voting-age majority or something close to it.
Alabama asked the Supreme Court to block that order. The Court initially paused it, then heard the case on the merits. In June 2023, the Supreme Court largely affirmed the lower court’s analysis.
What the Supreme Court decided
The headline holding
By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court held that the plaintiffs’ challenge fit comfortably within existing Section 2 doctrine. The Court did not invent a new test. It reaffirmed the framework federal courts have used for decades in redistricting vote-dilution cases.
In plain English, the Court said this: when the evidence shows an additional district can be drawn where Black voters would have a real opportunity to elect their preferred candidates, and the state’s map instead dilutes that opportunity, Section 2 can require a fix.
Not a ruling on partisan gerrymandering
Allen v. Milligan is often discussed alongside gerrymandering fights, but legally it lives in a different lane.
- Partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable in federal court after Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), where the Court said there is no manageable federal standard for deciding them. State constitutions and state courts can still matter, but the federal courthouse is mostly closed on that theory.
- Racial vote dilution claims under the Voting Rights Act remain justiciable, with established legal tests and remedies.
That difference explains why this case landed with such force. It is a modern reminder that some redistricting claims still have teeth.
Section 2 in one paragraph
Section 2 is a nationwide rule. It applies whether or not a jurisdiction has a history of discrimination, and whether or not it was ever covered by the old preclearance regime of Section 5. It focuses on results and opportunity: do the challenged lines, in practice, interact with local conditions so that minority voters have less ability to elect candidates of choice than everyone else?
That is why Allen v. Milligan matters after the Court’s earlier decisions weakening other parts of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 remains the primary federal tool for challenging maps that minimize minority electoral opportunity.
The legal engine: Gingles
The modern Section 2 test for redistricting cases traces back to Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). Courts often describe it as three “preconditions,” followed by a broader look at real-world circumstances.
Gingles 1: Can another opportunity district be drawn?
The minority group must be large and geographically compact enough that you could draw an additional district where the group would have a meaningful opportunity to elect candidates of choice.
This does not mean the district must be pretty. It means it must be reasonably shaped under traditional districting principles like contiguity, compactness, and keeping communities together.
Gingles 2: Does the minority electorate vote together?
The plaintiffs must show the minority group is politically cohesive, meaning its members tend to support the same candidates often enough that the group acts like a voting bloc.
Gingles 3: Does the majority usually defeat that bloc?
The plaintiffs must also show that the majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the minority group’s preferred candidates in the absence of an opportunity district.
Then: totality of circumstances
If those three preconditions are met, the court then asks a bigger question: given the local political reality, does the map deny equal opportunity?
Courts consider factors like the jurisdiction’s history of discrimination, the extent of racially polarized voting, whether minority candidates have been elected, campaign practices, and other context that helps explain whether the lines are doing discriminatory work.
Arguments in brief
What Alabama argued
Alabama’s core position was that the plaintiffs’ proposed remedies improperly required race to play too large a role in line-drawing. The state pressed for a more race-neutral baseline, argued for tighter limits on when Section 2 can require an additional district, and warned that the plaintiffs’ approach would push courts and map drawers toward race-driven districting.
What the dissent emphasized
The dissenters criticized the modern Section 2 framework in today’s political conditions and argued the Court’s approach risks incentivizing race-based sorting. They also expressed concern that Section 2 litigation can drift toward a proportionality mindset in practice, even if the statute formally disclaims proportional representation.
Why the Court stuck with a second district
At the risk of making it sound too mechanical, the heart of Allen v. Milligan was not a philosophical debate. It was a factual one.
The plaintiffs offered proposed maps showing two districts could be drawn where Black voters would have an opportunity to elect candidates of choice, consistent with traditional redistricting criteria. The lower court credited that evidence and found racially polarized voting patterns that made the one-opportunity-district plan functionally limiting.
The Supreme Court’s majority concluded that Alabama was asking it to rewrite Section 2 doctrine, and it declined to do so. The Court treated the case as a straightforward application of Gingles, not an invitation to narrow Section 2 beyond recognition.
Glossary
- Vote dilution: A claim that district lines or an election system weakens a minority group’s electoral power so that the group has less opportunity to elect candidates of choice than other voters do.
- Section 2 (Voting Rights Act): A federal statute that prohibits voting practices that result in denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color. In redistricting, it can require districts that provide minority voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of choice.
- Majority-minority district: A district where a racial or language minority group makes up more than 50 percent of the relevant population, often the voting-age population. Not every Section 2 remedy must be a strict majority-minority district, but these are common in litigation and settlement.
- Opportunity district: A district where minority voters have a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. Depending on local voting patterns and coalition support, this can sometimes be achieved without a numerical majority.
- Gingles factors: The three preconditions from Thornburg v. Gingles used in many Section 2 vote-dilution cases: (1) a workable additional opportunity district can be drawn, (2) the minority group votes cohesively, and (3) the majority typically votes as a bloc to defeat the minority-preferred candidates.
- Racially polarized voting: A pattern where voters of different races consistently prefer different candidates. This matters because it helps show whether cracking or packing minority voters will predictably change outcomes.
- Cracking: Splitting a cohesive group of voters across multiple districts so it cannot form a decisive voting bloc in any of them.
- Packing: Concentrating a group of voters into a single district beyond what is necessary, reducing that group’s influence in surrounding districts.
Why these cases surge after a census
The census is the starting gun. Every ten years, states must rebalance districts to account for population shifts. That makes redistricting fights both predictable and uniquely high stakes: the winners draw lines that can shape Congress and state legislatures for a decade.
Why litigation clusters early
- Timing: New maps are adopted early in the decade, and challengers rush to sue before multiple election cycles lock in the status quo.
- Evidence: Fresh census data gives both sides new demographic baselines. Expert analysis of where communities live and how they vote becomes central.
- Remedies: Courts are more willing to order changes early, before elections are run under an unlawful map.
What Allen v. Milligan signals
The decision tells map drawers something important: even in a Supreme Court era skeptical of many voting-rights theories, Section 2 vote-dilution claims are still viable when the classic evidence is there.
It also tells challengers something just as important: these cases are hard, technical, and expensive, but they are not symbolic. A well-supported record can still force real line changes, even in a state that insists its map is politics-only.
The constitutional backdrop
The Voting Rights Act is a statute, not a constitutional amendment. But it sits on constitutional foundations, including Congress’s enforcement authority under the Reconstruction Amendments.
At the same time, redistricting is also a state power with deep constitutional roots. States run elections, set district lines, and structure representation, subject to federal constraints like equal protection, one person one vote, and statutes like the Voting Rights Act.
Allen v. Milligan is what that balance looks like in practice: states draw the lines, and federal law can step in when the lines systematically deny minority voters an equal chance to translate votes into representation.
What happened next in Alabama
The Court’s decision sent the case back down for implementation. The basic destination was clear even if the route was not: Alabama needed a congressional plan that included a second district where Black voters would have an opportunity to elect candidates of choice.
In practice, compliance took additional rounds of litigation and court supervision. Alabama enacted a remedial map that the lower court found inadequate, and a court-supervised process, including a special master, produced a plan that added a second Black-opportunity district before later legislative action moved the state closer to the court-ordered remedy.
That is the real output of Section 2 litigation. Not a speech. Not a principle. A map that changes the incentives, the candidates, and the representation a state sends to Washington.
Questions to carry forward
Allen v. Milligan did not end the redistricting wars. It clarified one battlefield.
- If federal courts will not police partisan gerrymandering, will Section 2 become the primary way to contest maps that are both partisan and racial in effect?
- How will states adjust their line-drawing strategies to reduce Section 2 vulnerability while still pursuing partisan advantage?
- As demographics shift, what counts as a workable opportunity district, especially where coalition voting is common?
Those questions will not wait for another generation of cases. They show up every decade, right on schedule, right after the census.