Alabama's Map Is Dead. Again.

A three-judge federal panel blocked Alabama Republicans' redrawn congressional map on Tuesday, according to The Hill.

The judges ruled it still failed to comply with the Supreme Court's directive in Allen v. Milligan — the 2023 decision that told Alabama it needed a second majority-Black district. Alabama Republicans drew a new map anyway. The panel said: not good enough.

This is not a new fight. But Tuesday's ruling is the latest concrete development in an ongoing legal saga. The federal panel directly contradicted Alabama Republicans' argument that their revised map satisfied the Court's requirements.

The Supreme Court told Alabama to fix its map. Alabama fixed it. The federal panel looked at the fix and said it does not work. Alabama Republicans are now running out of runway.

The Broader SCOTUS Partisanship Fight — What's Actually New

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a public broadside against the conservative supermajority following the Louisiana redistricting decision. The story has moved.

A USA Today opinion piece published June 23, 2025 — by Dace Potas — pushes back hard on the partisan-Court narrative with actual data that mainstream coverage is largely ignoring.

Only 20% of Americans view the Supreme Court as politically neutral, according to recent polling cited by USA Today. That's a legitimacy crisis hiding in plain sight.

Potas argues the perception is badly distorted. Earlier this month, the Court ruled on a religious liberty case, a firearms case, and a DEI case. All three were unanimous. The media barely covered any of them. Why? Because unanimous decisions don't fit the partisan warfare narrative that drives clicks and cable segments.

The Barrett Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About Honestly

The most revealing data point in the USA Today analysis involves Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The left calls her a Trump sycophant. MAGA calls her a liberal in disguise. Both are wrong, and both are embarrassing themselves.

What did Barrett actually do to earn all this heat? She voted against Trump on the Alien Enemies Act deportation case. She voted against freezing USAID funds. That's it. Two votes.

She also joined the majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, restore handgun carry rights, and eliminate race-based affirmative action. According to Potas, the MAGA backlash against Barrett for two dissents — while ignoring a track record that would make any conservative proud — is exactly the kind of bad-faith scorekeeping that's destroying honest conversation about the Court.

This is about calling out intellectual dishonesty on both sides.

The Academic Left's Argument — And Its Limits

UCLA Law professor Richard L. Hasen published a piece in the Georgetown Law Journal arguing the Court has taken a deliberate "pro-partisanship turn" in election law — developing what he calls three subtle doctrinal tools that entrench Republican power, particularly in redistricting cases.

Hasen's core claim: Chief Justice John Roberts has displayed what Hasen calls "false naivete" about social science evidence on voting behavior — calling political science tests "sociological gobbledygook" in the Rucho v. Common Cause partisan gerrymandering case, and declaring in Shelby County v. Holder that "things have changed in the South" while gutting the Voting Rights Act's preclearance requirement.

Hasen's analysis is serious academic work and deserves engagement, not dismissal.

What Hasen's piece does not address: the unanimous decisions. The cross-ideological coalitions. The cases where Barrett, Roberts, or even Kavanaugh broke from the conservative bloc. A theory of pure partisan capture doesn't survive contact with that evidence.

Thomas and Alito Dissent on CDL Case — A Genuine Constitutional Debate

Separately, and largely ignored amid the redistricting noise: the Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear Florida's challenge to California and Washington state's commercial driver's license standards.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, arguing the Court was obligated to hear the case, according to The Hill.

This isn't culture war. This is a real federalism question — whether one state can impose its licensing standards on interstate commercial drivers through a domino effect on federal CDL databases. Thomas and Alito think it's a serious enough constitutional issue that the full Court should weigh in. The majority disagreed.

That's not partisanship. That's a genuine legal dispute about federalism that deserves straight coverage — not burial under redistricting headlines.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Getting Wrong

The dominant media frame right now — amplified by Justice Jackson's public dissent and Hasen's academic work — is that the Court is irredeemably partisan and conservatives are the villains.

That frame is too simple, and it's making Americans dumber about how their own government works.

Three unanimous decisions in one week. Barrett crossing the aisle. Thomas and Alito making a straight federalism argument on CDLs. None of that fits the "Republican justices doing the bidding of the Republican Party" narrative.

The redistricting cases are a real problem. The Alabama panel ruling this week proves the fight isn't over. But painting the entire Court with one brush — either as heroic originalists or partisan hacks — is lazy journalism that serves nobody.

The Court is complicated. The media isn't.

Regular people trying to understand what the highest court in the land is actually doing deserve better than that.