A federal judge has approved a new state Senate district map for Montgomery in a lawsuit that alleged Black voters in the capital city area were packed into one district in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee, issued the ruling Monday, approving a map drawn by the same court-appointed special master team that redrew Alabama’s congressional map two years ago in another case alleging a violation of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act.

Alabama’s state Senate map, approved by the Legislature in 2021 and used in the 2022 election, was challenged in a lawsuit by Black voters and by Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP.

Manasco ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that the map diluted the influence of Black voters in the Montgomery districts. She blocked the state from using it in next year’s election.

Manasco’s ruling came after an eight-day trial with 20 witnesses and arguments from 48 lawyers.

Plaintiffs also challenged the Huntsville districts, but Manasco did not find a violation there.

The judge gave the Legislature a chance to adopt a new map to fix the violations in Montgomery, but Gov. Kay Ivey declined to call a special session.

Manasco’s order on Monday approved one of the three remedial maps submitted by the special master in a report on Oct. 24.

The judge said the new map would fix the Black voter dilution violation while sticking as closely as possible to the map passed by the Legislature.

“The Plaintiffs prevailed on the merits of their Section Two claim in the Montgomery area, and the Court is satisfied that the facts and law are quite clearly in their favor,” the judge wrote.

Manasco wrote that the new map “affords Black voters in the Montgomery area an equal opportunity, but certainly not a guarantee, to elect Senators of their choice.”

Only the two Montgomery-area Senate districts are changed.

Currently, the Montgomery area is represented by Sen. Will Barfoot, a white Republican, and Sen. Kirk Hatcher, a Black Democrat.

When the map was approved in 2021, Barfoot’s district, District 25, had a Black voting age population of 29%, and Hatcher’s district, District 26, had a Black voting age population of 66%.

The new map moves some Black voters from District 26 into District 25.

Under the plan, District 25 will have a Black voting age population of 51.1%, and District 26 will have a Black voting age population of 43.9%.

An analysis of 17 previous elections showed that the Black-preferred candidate would win 88% of the time in the new District 25 and 53% of the time in the new District 26.

If Democrats are able to use the new map to flip the District 26 seat, it would not change the balance of power in the state Senate, where Republicans hold 27 of 35 seats.

The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Alabama, the Legal Defense Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Manasco was one of the three judges who approved Alabama’s new congressional map in 2023 after finding that the map passed by the Legislature diluted the Black vote in violation of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act.

That resulted in the election of Sen. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, the second Democrat and second Black member of Alabama’s seven-member Congressional delegation.

However, both victories for plaintiffs in the Alabama case could be temporary because of a pending Louisiana case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs in that case are white voters. A ruling in their favor could make it harder to prove racial discrimination in redistricting.