The Supreme Court will let Texas use a new congressional map in next year’s crucial midterm elections that could determine the balance of power in Congress.
A redistricting war among states to maximize Republican victories in a Donald Trump-backed campaign to maintain control of Congress got a significant boost from the nation’s highest court Thursday, with the court’s conservative majority agreeing to temporarily block a lower-court order that found the map unlawful.
The map will remain in play while a legal challenge continues.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
In August, Texas Governor Greg Abbott approved a map drawn up by Texas Republicans that is expected to add up to five GOP seats in the House of Representatives, a move that sparked a gerrymandering arms race and legal battles among Republicans and Democrats across the country to reshape their states’ political boundaries ahead of the 2026 elections.
Two federal judges blocked the state from using the map, arguing that there was sufficient evidence that state lawmakers had effectively racially gerrymandered the political boundaries for each congressional district.
Texas District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, ordered the state to return to its 2021 map.
The state turned to the Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn Brown’s ruling, a challenge that is expected to return to the justices in the coming months as Texas and other states begin to carve out new maps in time for 2026 elections — a deadline that is fast approaching for many states.
With the new map, Republican candidates in Texas are expected to gain control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts, up from the 25 that are currently held by GOP House members under the 2021 map.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan rebuked the court’s majority in her dissent, which was joined by liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warning that the court has delivered a ruling with “serious” consequences that run afoul of longstanding precedent and the Constitution.
The conservative majority “disrespects the work” of the lower-court judge “that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge — that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right,” Kagan wrote.
The order is a disservice to the “millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race,” she added.
“Because this Court’s precedents and our Constitution demand better, I respectfully dissent,” Kagan wrote.
“The majority today loses sight of its proper role. It is supposed to review the District Court’s factfinding only for clear error,” she wrote. “The majority can reach the result it does — overturning the District Court’s finding of racial line-drawing, even if to achieve partisan goals — only by arrogating to itself that court’s rightful function. We know better, the majority declares today. I cannot think of a reason why.”
The court’s decision to block the lower-court order effectively “guarantees” that the new map will be in play for next year’s election, ensuring that “many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race,” Kagan wrote.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion to push back against Kagan’s dissent, arguing that the plaintiffs in the case failed to show that race — not partisanship — was the motivating factor to redesign the state’s map.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defended the map, called the order a “massive win.”
"This map reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits," he said in a statement.
Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said the order marks a “sad day for our democracy.”
“The right-wing Supreme Court just greenlit Republicans’ schemes to gerrymander their way into power in Congress,” she said in a statement. “We know Texas was just the beginning of Republicans’ schemes, as Trump continues to dangerously pressure more state Republicans to fall in line ahead of 2026.”
In July, the president commanded Texas Republicans to do a “simple redrawing” of the state’s congressional maps. Abbott then summoned state lawmakers to the state capitol in Austin for an emergency session to do just that.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and other Democratic leaders are laying the groundwork to redraw their states’ maps in the hopes of sending more Democrats to Congress. Voters last month approved plans for a new map in the Golden State that would neutralize Republican gains in Texas.
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