Alabama’s secretary of state, John H. Merrill, declined to comment on the ruling.
Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party’s main mapmaking organization, said the map was based on one that was cleared in 2011 by President Obama’s Justice Department, then led by Mr. Holder, and comports with the Voting Rights Act.
How U.S. Redistricting Works
What is redistricting? It’s the redrawing of the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. It happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect changes in population.
How does it work? The census dictates how many seats in Congress each state will get. Mapmakers then work to ensure that a state’s districts all have roughly the same number of residents, to ensure equal representation in the House.
Who draws the new maps? Each state has its own process. Eleven states leave the mapmaking to an outside panel. But most — 39 states — have state lawmakers draw the new maps for Congress.
If state legislators can draw their own districts, won’t they be biased? Yes. Partisan mapmakers often move district lines — subtly or egregiously — to cluster voters in a way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.
Is gerrymandering legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.
“The new map maintains the status quo,” Mr. Kincaid said. “It does not violate Section 2 of the V.R.A. under the current application of the law and should be upheld.”
For three decades, Alabama has had a single majority-Black congressional district that has elected Black Democrats. The state’s other six districts have been represented only by white Republicans since 2011.
In Alabama’s lone majority-Black district, represented by Terri Sewell, a Democrat, more than 60 percent of the voters are Black — representing almost a third of the state’s Black population. The bulk of the state’s remaining Black population is split — or “cracked” — among the First, Second and Third Congressional Districts, all of which have been safely Republican for years.
In 2018, a group of Black voters filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the Alabama map violated the Voting Rights Act. They lost.
“It’s past time for Alabama to move beyond its sordid history of racial discrimination at the polls, and to listen to and be responsive to the needs and concerns of voters of color,” Tish Gotell Faulks, the legal director of the A.C.L.U. of Alabama, said following Wednesday’s ruling.
President Biden and congressional Democrats sought to enact legislation that, among other things, would have limited partisan gerrymandering by state legislatures. That effort died when Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, both Democrats, thwarted a party-wide push to overcome Republican opposition by changing Senate rules.
Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.