The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared Alabama to use its 2023 Republican-drawn House map for the 2026 midterms, extended nationwide telemedicine access to the abortion drug mifepristone until at least Thursday, and left pending a Virginia Democratic emergency appeal of Friday's state Supreme Court ruling on that state's redistricting referendum. The Alabama order, issued one week before the state's May 19 primary, was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent.
The trio of actions resets two contested fights of the term and queues up a third. Alabama's Republican legislature now has a path to revert to a map containing one majority-Black district out of seven, removing one of the two majority-Black seats drawn by a three-judge panel for the 2024 cycle. The mifepristone stay keeps the pill flowing by mail and through telehealth while the justices weigh a fuller emergency request that would restrict the drug.
Alabama
The high court sent Alabama's appeals back to the district court in light of last month's 6-3 decision in a Louisiana case that weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has signed a measure authorizing a special election for districts whose boundaries change if the state reverts to the 2023 lines. Alabama's delegation today is five Republicans and two Democrats.
Alabama Solicitor General Barrett Bowdre had urged the court to act. "Plaintiffs would have Alabama hold elections under a map that was erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst. Nothing requires that result," Bowdre wrote in the state's emergency request.
Virginia
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday voided a voter-approved redistricting referendum that had capped a mid-decade redraw, locking in a Republican edge that JSJ covered Saturday as a 14-to-six shift in the state's 2026 House math. Virginia Democrats' emergency appeal asks the justices to stay that ruling and restore the referendum's limits; the high court took no action Monday, leaving Friday's state decision in force for now.
Mifepristone
The mifepristone order is administrative, not a ruling on the merits. Justice Samuel Alito had issued an initial one-week halt on May 5 that was due to expire Monday night; the new pause runs through Thursday and, in PBS NewsHour's description, means "health care providers can still prescribe mifepristone via telemedicine and deliver it through the mail." The underlying case turns on a 5th Circuit-aligned ruling, pressed by Louisiana and other Republican attorneys general, that would unwind the Food and Drug Administration's 2021 rules permitting mail-order dispensing.
The counterpoint
Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, wrote that the majority's Alabama move was "inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week." Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who holds one of the state's two Black-majority seats, called the order "incredibly unfortunate" and said it "sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the state." No right-leaning body-tier source in today's file covered any of the three orders.
Thursday is the next marker on both decided fronts: the mifepristone pause lapses then absent further action, and Alabama's primary follows on May 19. The Virginia petition has no posted hearing date.