MONTGOMERY — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation on Friday allowing the state to schedule separate special U.S. House primaries if courts permit Alabama to use different congressional districts in this year's elections. The bill, approved by lawmakers earlier the same day, gives Ivey authority to set new primary dates for affected districts if redrawn maps are put into place.

Alabama's primaries are scheduled to take place under the current maps on May 19. The legislation would only take effect if a court orders a change to the congressional district boundaries.

Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Louisiana's map that limited the use of race in redistricting, Alabama Republicans asked a federal court to allow them to replace their current court-ordered congressional map, which contains two majority-minority districts represented by Democrats, with a map lawmakers approved in 2023 that has one. Alabama Republicans filed a similar request with the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday.

In 2023, a federal court ordered Alabama to adopt a map with one majority-Black seat in the 7th Congressional District and one Black opportunity seat in the 2nd Congressional District, where Black residents represent a plurality. The two Democratic-held seats in Alabama are currently represented by Reps. Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures.

Alabama Republican House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter defended the legislation in a statement. "This guarantees that the Second Congressional District — which was wrongfully handed to democrats on a silver platter by the courts — is flipped back to republican control while also putting the Seventh Congressional District in play. As much as we would have preferred to draw a new map like our neighbors in Tennessee, the legal constraints created by Allen v. Milligan make that impossible today," Ledbetter said.

During debate inside the Alabama Statehouse, Black lawmakers criticized the measure. "Today we are not debating maps, we are debating democracy itself. We're debating whether power matters more than principle," state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures said.

Republicans in southern states have been moving to try to capitalize on the recent Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana case, which weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. Demonstrators outside the Statehouse on Friday shouted "fight for democracy" and "down with white supremacy." Among them was Betty White Boynton. "I was out there in 1965 marching for the right to vote, and now we are back here in 2026 doing the same thing," Boynton said.