The Supreme Court’s conservatives were highly skeptical on Wednesday of arguments that Republicans in the South Carolina legislature unconstitutionally relied on race while drawing congressional district lines.

A federal court in Alabama on Thursday ordered the state to use a new congressional map that includes a second district where Black voters will have an opportunity to decide the result.

The order comes after about two years of litigation over the state’s districts drawn after the 2020 census. A three-judge panel found the map violated the Voting Rights Act because it denied opportunities to Black voters.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency bid from Alabama, setting the stage for a new congressional map likely to include a second Black majority district to account for the state’s 27% Black population.

The one-line order reflects that the feelings on the court haven’t changed since June when a 5-4 Supreme Court affirmed a lower court that had ordered the state to redraw its seven-seat congressional map to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

The first meeting of the Ohio Redistricting Commission underscored divisions among legislative Republicans that stalled selecting a co-chairman Wednesday and threatened to complicate efforts to craft new, constitutional House and Senate maps by this fall.

Ohio currently has no maps for state House and Senate seats just three months before candidates must file to run for the 2024 election.

Last month, the Supreme Court held that Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act when it drew racially gerrymandered congressional districts. Under maps drawn by the state’s Republican legislature, Black voters (who make up more than a quarter of Alabama’s population) only had a real shot of electing a member of the US House in one of the state’s seven districts. The Court effectively ordered Alabama to draw a second district that was likely to elect a candidate preferred by Black Alabamians.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected one of Republicans’ most audacious attempts to control elections.

The big picture: In a 6-3 decision, the justices said states' election laws can be challenged in court — a rebuke to a burgeoning conservative movement that has sought to block the courts from hearing such cases.

Context: A group of North Carolina GOP lawmakers had asked the court to embrace a sweeping legal theory called the independent state legislature doctrine.

In a major election-law decision, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that although the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to regulate federal elections, state courts can supervise the legislature’s exercise of that power. By a vote of 6-3, the court rejected the so-called “independent state legislature theory,” holding that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not violate the Constitution when it set aside a congressional map adopted by the state’s legislature.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state judges do have the power to override state legislatures when it comes to how federal elections are carried out.

In a 6-3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the high court ruled that the Elections Clause of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution "does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review."