🔗 Share this article

In a per curiam decision, the highest judicial body permitted Texas to use a redrawn congressional boundary scheme that is projected to include as many as five additional Republican-leaning districts. The six-to-three decision, released on Thursday, upholds a appeal by the state to set aside a district court's injunction that had struck down the new map in November.

Court's Explanation

The federal judge wrongly interjected itself into an ongoing primary campaign, generating much confusion and upsetting the sensitive balance of power in elections, the supreme court said in justifying its action.

That lower court had earlier ruled that Texas had likely sorted voters according to their race – a practice known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the redistricting plan. It had mandated the state to use the boundaries created after the most recent national count for the upcoming election.

Sharp Dissent

With a strongly worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's ruling. She contended that it undermined the work of the district court, noting that its decision was written by a judge appointed by ex-President Donald Trump.

We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision, Kagan argued in a dissent co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justice went on, Today's ruling solidifies that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its increased partisan advantage, will control next year's elections. And it means that many Texas voters, unjustly, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared consistently, is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

National Map-Drawing Fight

The ruling is part of a nationwide fight over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is a crucial component in efforts to reshape the U.S. House map to bolster a narrow Republican majority. Typically, boundary revision takes place after a decennial population count. Yet the action by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier this year set off a chain reaction among other states.

Republicans in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also passed new maps that are estimated to yield several additional Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, for their part, have responded with new maps in states like California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG welcomed the High Court's decision. In a comment, he said the order protected Texas's prerogative to draw a map that ensures electoral outcomes favorable to his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he added.

In contrast, opposition party representatives lamented the outcome. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the leader of a major party campaign committee.

A senior House figure stated the court had another time eroded its legitimacy by approving a racially gerrymandered 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 concluded.