Supreme Court lets Texas use gerrymandered map that could give GOP 5 more House seats

The Supreme Court docket has cleared the way in which for Texas to make use of a brand new congressional map that might assist Republicans win 5 extra U.S. Home seats within the 2026 midterm election.

The choice launched Thursday boosts the GOP’s probabilities of preserving its slim majority within the Home of Representatives amid an unprecedented gerrymandering struggle launched by President Trump, who has been pushing Texas and different GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to learn Republicans.

The excessive court docket’s unsigned order follows Texas’ emergency request for the justices to pause a three-judge panel’s ruling blocking the state’s lately redrawn map.

After holding a nine-day listening to in October, that panel discovered challengers of the brand new map are more likely to show in a trial that the map violates the Structure by discriminating in opposition to voters primarily based on race.

In its majority opinion — authored by a Trump nominee — the panel cited a letter from the Division of Justice and a number of public statements by key Republican state lawmakers that recommended their map-drawer manipulated the racial demographics of voting districts to remove current districts the place Black and Latino voters collectively make up the bulk. For the following 12 months’s midterms, the panel ordered Texas to maintain utilizing the congressional districts the state’s GOP-controlled legislature drew in 2021.

However in Texas’ submitting to the Supreme Court docket, the state claimed the lawmakers weren’t motivated by race and have been centered as a substitute on drawing new districts which can be extra more likely to elect Republicans.

What the Supreme Court docket mentioned 

In its Thursday resolution to aspect with Texas, the Supreme Court docket mentioned the panel “didn’t honor the presumption of legislative good religion by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial proof in opposition to the legislature.”

The excessive court docket additionally discovered that, given the discharge of the panel’s ruling in the midst of Texas’ candidate submitting interval, the decrease court docket had “improperly inserted itself into an lively main marketing campaign, inflicting a lot confusion and upsetting the fragile federal-state steadiness in elections.”

In a dissenting opinion, nevertheless, Supreme Court docket Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court docket’s majority for reversing the panel’s resolution after a “perusal, over a vacation weekend, of a chilly paper report.”

The excessive court docket’s resolution “ensures that many Texas residents, for no good motive, shall be positioned in electoral districts due to their race,” wrote Kagan, who was joined by the court docket’s two different liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “And that end result, as this Court docket has pronounced 12 months in and 12 months out, is a violation of the Structure.”

In November, after the panel blocked the brand new map, Justice Samuel Alito allowed Texas to briefly reinstate it whereas the Supreme Court docket reviewed the state’s emergency request.

Texas state Legal professional Common Ken Paxton, a Republican, cheered the Supreme Court docket’s ruling on Thursday, saying in an announcement that the GOP-drawn map “displays the political local weather of our state and is an enormous win for Texas and each conservative who’s bored with watching the left attempt to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”

Democrats criticized the excessive court docket. In an announcement, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee, mentioned in an announcement that the “folks of Texas don’t need this map, nevertheless it was put in place on the behest of nationwide Republicans who’re determined to cling to their majority within the Home of Representatives by decimating minority voting alternative.”

Texas kicked off a redistricting struggle

The mid-decade redistricting plan Texas Republicans handed in August sparked a counter response by Democratic leaders in California, the place voters in a particular election in November authorized a brand new congressional map that might assist Democrats acquire 5 extra Home seats. A court docket listening to for a authorized problem to that map is ready for Dec. 15.

The remainder of the redistricting panorama stays unsettled as nicely. Lawsuits are difficult new gerrymanders in locations like Missouri, the place there may be additionally a contested referendum effort. And different states, together with Florida, Indiana and Virginia, may pursue new districts previous to the midterms.

Final week, a federal court docket dominated to permit North Carolina’s midterm election to be held below a lately redrawn map that might give Republicans an extra seat.

One other wave of congressional redistricting could also be coming quickly relying on what — and when — the Supreme Court docket decides in a voting rights case about Louisiana’s congressional map. After the court docket held a uncommon rehearing for that case in October, some states are looking ahead to a possible earlier-than-usual ruling which will enable Republican-led states to attract extra GOP-friendly districts in time for the 2026 midterms.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey