SCOTUS

At the urging of President Donald Trump, Republicans in eight states redrew the boundaries of dozens of congressional districts over the past year while angling for an edge that could help them hold onto a slim House majority in a tough midterm election.Ultimately, it didn't work. In Alabama, a Supreme Court ruling allowed the Republican-led Legislature to revert to what the GOP considered to be a friendlier map. But Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures won reelection anyway, defying Republicans' plans.

Democrats have won control of Congress in Tuesday’s 2026 midterm elections in a widespread repudiation of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, a drubbing that reached deep into reliable GOP territory. The Associated Press called Alabama's Governor's race for Republican Tommy Tuberville just after midnight.

When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act this year, U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures knew he was going to be targeted. Alabama's Republican-controlled Legislature soon after redrew the 2nd Congressional District, one of only two in the state represented by a Democrat, to make it easier for the GOP to win.

Years after his release from prison, Patrick Dewayne Smith of Alabama spends Sundays with his family in a modest brick church with a white steeple in rural Tennessee. He works two jobs. He goes to ball games to cheer for nieces and nephews he had never met. After serving 13 years for a nonviolent drug conviction, he is trying to rebuild his life.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Roy Moore's push to restore an $8.2 million defamation verdict over a 2017 Senate race ad funded by a Democratic-aligned super PAC.Justices declined to hear Moore’s appeal of a lower court decision that vacated the large verdict.

Alabama and two other Republican states went to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to challenge abortion “shield laws” protecting providers in three Democratic states, escalating the legal conflict over pills that account for a majority of abortions

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway. The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast. Alabama’s mail-in ballots for absentee voting were sent out last week.

Former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears won his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. Multiple published reports, including the Times, says a jury awarded the walk on athlete of over $9 million dollars following a trial in the aftermath of the murder of a Birmingham woman.

President Donald Trump didn't get what he wanted in some of the biggest Supreme Court cases this year. The list includes tariffs, birthright citizenship and the attempted firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook. But he also emerged from the term with even greater power. However, the 1964 decision in an Alabama legal case that helped define freedom of the press and defamation in the U.S. went unchallenged.

The fate of Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee remains in limbo following actions by the U.S. Supreme Court and a federal judge in Montgomery. This situation appears to be spilling over to other states and the debate over capital punishment.