A three-judge federal district court will hold a hearing Tuesday on three proposed Alabama congressional district maps drawn by a special master appointed by the court.

The court is expected to choose a map for Alabama to use in next year’s elections. A new map is needed because the court ruled that the one passed by the Legislature in July failed to fix a likely Voting Rights Act violation.

The court issued a preliminary injunction on Sept. 5 blocking the state from using the Legislature’s map. Special Master Richard Allen and his team submitted three proposed maps on Sept. 25, as ordered by the court. The court gave parties in the case and others three days to file objections to the maps and set the hearing for Tuesday to consider the maps and those objections.

The state’s lawyers have defended the Legislature’s map and asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay on the district court’s order, which would have allowed the state to use the Legislature’s map. But the Supreme Court denied the state’s request last week.

Attorney General Steve Marshall and Solicitor General Edmund LaCour wrote that special master’s maps were racial gerrymanders. Marshall and LaCour represent Secretary of State Wes Allen, who is the state defendant in the case. They say the maps wrongly put race ahead of traditional redistricting principles like compactness and preserving communities of interest.

Tuesday’s hearing is the next step in litigation that started two years ago. Three groups of plaintiffs challenged the map the Legislature passed in 2021 to comply with the requirement for reapportionment after every census. It included one majority Black district, District 7, and six heavily white districts, the same as every plan in Alabama since 1992.

In January 2022, the three-judge court ruled that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act because it did not give Black voters the same opportunity as other voters to elect a candidate of their choice. The Supreme Court put that ruling on hold and allowed the 2021 map to be used in last year’s election. But in June, the Supreme Court affirmed the three-judge court’s finding of a likely Voting Rights Act violation.

The three-judge court gave the Legislature a chance to fix the map. But the map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in July did not add a second district that was majority Black or close to majority Black, one where Black voters would have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

Allen, in his report and recommendation to the court, wrote that the three plans he submitted were not drawn to obtain racial population targets. Allen said the maps follow the court’s instructions on adhering to traditional redistricting principles while also fixing the likely Voting Rights Act violation.

Allen wrote that he and his team, including cartographer David Ely, sought to minimize changes to the 2023 map passed by the Legislature, with no changes to Districts 3, 4, and 5, and minimal changes to Districts 6, and 7. There are substantial changes in Districts 1 and 2, which cover most of the southern half of the state.

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Allen’s three maps are similar to one proposed by the two groups of plaintiffs who filed the Voting Rights Act challenge. They retain a majority Black voting age population in District 7 and raise the Black voting age population in District 2 from 40% on the Legislature’s map to about 50%.

A performance analysis based on recent election history showed the Black-preferred candidate would have won most elections in the redrawn District 2.