🔗 Share this article

Through a unsigned order, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted Texas to employ a revised congressional map that may create as many as five additional Republican-leaning districts. The 6-3 ruling, handed down on Thursday, approves a petition by the state to lift a lower court's block that had rejected the new map in November.

Court's Reasoning

The district court wrongly interjected itself into an active primary campaign, causing considerable confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections, the justices wrote in explaining its action.

The federal court had previously found that Texas had likely classified voters according to their race – a practice known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it passed the new maps. It had ordered the state to use the boundaries drawn after the last decennial survey for the upcoming election.

Strong Dissent

Through a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the majority's action. She stated that it disrespected the work of the lower court, observing that its opinion was crafted 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 wrote in a dissent supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justice went on, The majority's order ensures that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its boosted favoritism, will govern next year's elections. And it means that many Texas residents, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts based on their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced consistently, is a infraction of the constitution.

Countrywide Map-Drawing Struggle

This decision occurs during a nationwide fight over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in pushes to reshape the U.S. House map to protect a narrow Republican majority. Ordinarily, redistricting happens after a decennial population count. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a brazen off-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a wave among other states.

Republicans in including North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted redistricting plans that could add several more conservative seats. Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have countered with new maps in including California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Political Reactions

Lone Star State attorney general praised the supreme court ruling. In a comment, he said the order upheld Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that guarantees electoral outcomes supportive of the GOP. We are setting the precedent for restoring our country, through each electoral district and individual state, he added.

Conversely, Democratic leaders decried the decision. It's incredibly disappointing that the Court has rubber stamped a map enacted by Texas Republicans which, simply put, is an extreme, racially gerrymandered map, said the chair of a major Democratic election organization.

A senior House leader said the court had yet again shredded 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 added.