The Supreme Court is expected to rule any day on Texas's controversial congressional map, with a decision likely before Dec. 8, the filing deadline for candidates in Texas.
Why it matters: An anticipated ruling would mark the high court's first word on the redistricting wars that have defined the 2026 cycle. It wouldn't be the last.
Driving the news: On Tuesday night, Texas filed its final response for why its new map, drafted at President Trump's urging to give the GOP five new seats, should survive.
- Justice Samuel A. Alito temporarily reinstated Texas' GOP-favored congressional map last week, after a district court tossed it. Since then, briefs have been flooding the court, from the actual parties to outside interest groups to the state of Missouri.
- "The big question here is whether Donald Trump's gambit to maintain control of the House through redistricting is successful," said Jeffrey Wice, a redistricting expert at New York Law School.
- "The court is going to have to say something," he predicted.
Zoom out: A Supreme Court decision on the Texas case, Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, will provide some clues for how the court might respond to a flurry of mid-cycle redistricting efforts. Lawsuits are anticipated from California to North Carolina.
- The court's more consequential ruling — testing Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the future of minority-majority districts — is expected by next June when the court rules on Louisiana v. Callais.
Between the lines: The court's decision in Callais is unlikely to alter the 2026 battlefield — but it could fundamentally reorder maps in 2028 and 2030 — and upend the racial makeup of the House.
- For some Black lawmakers from the South, it's existential.
- If the court essentially repeals Section 2, at least a dozen minority-majority districts in the South will be eliminated, according to a New York Times analysis.
Zoom in: The Texas case involves many of the big issues that the court has grappled with in recent years, from racial gerrymandering to the deference federal courts should give to state legislatures.
- But it may come down to something more technical. Both sides are making arguments under the Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts should try to avoid changes close to an election.
- In Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006), the court ruled that last-minute changes risk confusing voters and might make it more difficult for officials to administer elections.
- The state has asked for a ruling by Monday, a week ahead of the filing deadline.
In the Texas case, GOP-aligned attorneys are arguing that reverting to the 2021 map, as the trial court ordered, would constitute a Purcell violation.
- "Purcell requires judicial restraint when a State's electoral machinery is already in motion," the state said in Tuesday's filing.
- The groups challenging the map scoff at that argument.
- "Defendants' argument that a denial of a stay would result in 'chaos' has it backwards," attorneys for the League of United Latin American Citizens wrote Monday night.
The bottom line: Predicting Supreme Court timing — let alone outcome — is more art than science.
- "I believe the court will rule swiftly on the motion for stay," said Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the lead challengers in the Texas case.
- "I am not going to peg this to any deadline in the Texas election calendar," she said. "It's been my experience that courts rule when they're ready."
