Alabama on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it keep Republican-drawn congressional lines in place as the state continues to fight a court order to create a second district where Black voters constitute a majority or close to it.

The Alabama attorney general’s office asked justices to put the order on hold while the state appeals “so that millions of Alabama voters are not soon districted into that court-ordered racial gerrymander.”

“Race-based redistricting at the expense of traditional principles bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid,” Steve Marshall’s office wrote.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which backed one of the court challenges in Alabama, likened the state’s actions to that of former segregationist Gov. George Wallace who tried to stop Black students from entering the University of Alabama in 1963.

“This is a shameful and arrogant continuation of a sordid history in Alabama that denies equal rights to Black Alabamians, no matter how the United States Supreme Court rules,” Holder said.

The state’s request to the Supreme Court comes after the three judges refused to put their order on hold as the state appeals. The judges said state voters should not have to endure another congressional election under an “unlawful map.”

“We repeat that we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the Secretary readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires. And we are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but did not even nurture the ambition to provide that required remedy,” the judges wrote Monday as they refused to stay their order.

Alabama’s hope for a reversal of fortune seems to at least partly hinge on persuading Justice Brett Kavanaugh to support the state’s side in the latest round. Kavanaugh did not join in all of the majority opinion.

Alabama’s court filing repeatedly cites Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in the case this summer. He wrote that even if race-based redistricting was allowed under the Voting Rights Act for a period of time, that “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”