🔗 Share this article

Via an unattributed order, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas to employ a newly configured congressional map that could add several five additional GOP-friendly districts. The six-to-three order, issued on Thursday, grants a petition by the state to set aside a federal judge's ruling that had invalidated the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Rationale

The federal judge wrongly interjected itself into an ongoing primary campaign, causing significant confusion and upsetting the fine federal-state balance in elections, the justices wrote in explaining its decision.

That lower court had determined that Texas had likely grouped voters by their race – a method known as illegal race-based districting – when it enacted the redistricting plan. It had ordered the state to employ the districts established after the 2020 census for the forthcoming election.

Sharp Dissenting Opinion

With a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's ruling. She argued that it disregarded the work of the district court, observing that its ruling was actually authored by a judge selected by former President Donald Trump.

While our court is superior in jurisdiction, we are not superior in making these fact-intensive determinations, Kagan wrote in a dissent supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She continued, The majority's order ensures that Texas's new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will dictate next year's elections. And it means that many Texas citizens, without justification, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared consistently, is a violation of the law of the land.

National Map-Drawing Fight

The court's action occurs during a countrywide contest over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in campaigns to reshape the U.S. House map to bolster a slim Republican control. Usually, boundary revision occurs after a decennial population count. Yet the action by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a wave among other states.

Republicans in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted new maps that could add several additional Republican-leaning seats. Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have responded with their own plans in states like California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG praised the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order protected Texas's basic authority to draw a map that guarantees electoral outcomes supportive of his party. We are setting the precedent for restoring our country, through each electoral district and individual state, he remarked.

Conversely, Democratic leaders decried the ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the chair of a major party election organization.

Another senior House leader said the court had once again damaged its legitimacy by approving a race-based map. Tonight's ruling by far-right justices on the supreme court is further proof that the extremists will do anything to rig the midterm elections. The gerrymandered Texas congressional map is a partisan and racially discriminatory power grab designed to subvert the will of the voters – particularly in Black and Latino communities, he stated.