Montgomery, Alabama - Alabama has filed an emergency appeal to a three-judge panel's decision to strike down the state's congressional maps after they were found to disenfranchise Black voters.

State officials on Monday asked the US Supreme Court, by October 1, to freeze the federal judges' ruling which called for a court-appointed official to redraw the redistricting lines ahead of 2024.

In June, Alabama was hit with a Supreme Court order ruling that its redistricting plan, which created just one majority-Black district out of seven, likely violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Justices said Alabama needed to add a second majority-Black district or something "close to it."

Republicans in the state legislature defied the order, redrawing Alabama's second congressional district to be 42.5% rather than 30% Black. The new plan left Black Americans without a second majority district, even though they make up more than a quarter of the state's population.

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The appeal before the Supreme Court came just hours after the three-judge panel denied Alabama's request to pause their decision.

In rejecting the stay, US District Judge Anna Manasco wrote for the panel that "it is exceptionally unusual for a litigant who has presented his arguments to the Supreme Court once already – and lost – to assert that he is now 'overwhelmingly likely' to prevail on those same arguments in that Court in this case."

"The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Without further delay."