Saturday marks a year since a groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling forced Alabama to redraw congressional maps to allow voters a greater chance of electing a second Black member of congress from the state.

Since then, the Allen v. Milligan case has resulted in a race for the newly redrawn 2nd District in central and south Alabama where a Black Democrat has a competitive chance to win in a contest against a white Republican.

Democrat Shomari Figures and Republican Caroleene Dobson will face off in the November general election in the newly configured district which was previously solidly white and Republican.

The high profile race is the result of a surprise Supreme Court ruling that Alabama’s congressional district map likely violated the Voting Rights Act .

Proponents of the decision celebrated its political result on Saturday’s anniversary.

“This incredible progress is worthy of celebration—all the more so because it did not come easily,” former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. Holder is Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which was part of the efforts to change voting maps.

The justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that Alabama’s 2021 congressional voting maps diluted the power of Black voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Allen v. Milligan brought more representative electoral maps to states once were thought to be shut off to Black voters, including Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana, Holder said.

Holder compared the fight by state leaders against the ruling and new maps to battles decades earlier in the Civil Rights era.

“From defying federal court orders to attempting to use litigation as a vehicle to roll back voting protections for citizens, the resistance to the enforcement of Allen v. Milligan over the past year mirrored the sordid history of the Jim Crow era,” Holder said. “That continued, concerted effort to achieve unearned, illegitimate power at the expense of communities of color demonstrates that our country remains too far from the Promised Land envisioned by those who sacrificed their lives for civil and voting rights.”

Alabama, which is about 27 percent Black, currently has one Black in its congressional delegation – Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham – whose district spans most of the Black Belt.

The Supreme Court ruling forced the Republican-controlled Legislature to draw a new map. They proposed an alternative map that still featured one majority Black district, which was also tossed out, resulting in the creation of a final map under the federal court oversight.

At the time of the historic Supreme Court ruling a year ago, U.W. Clemon, retired U.S. District Court judge and longtime civil rights attorney predicted a showdown.

Clemon in a June 2023 panel discussion at Miles College said that not even the order would be enough to make the state Legislature give Black residents greater representation in Washington. Clemon, who was also one of the first two Black people elected to the state Senate since the era of Reconstruction, correctly predicted that the federal court would have to intervene to enforce the ruling.

“I have absolutely no faith that the Alabama Legislature is going to do the right thing. It never has,” he said at the time. “The Legislature of course is going to do what it usually does.”