The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the state of Texas and its effort to use new maps for the 2026 election cycle.
The ruling is a victory for Republicans in the state, as a lower court ruled that the map separates voters by race, which is unconstitutional. Justice Samuel Alito placed that ruling on hold last month shortly after a three-panel district court in El Paso struck the map down. Alito hears emergency appeals from Texas.
The Court’s order read that “Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors.” It went further to say that the lower court “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
Alito seemed to address the accusations of the plaintiffs and the lower courts that the redistricting had unconstitutional racial motivations, saying that the dissenting justices don’t even dispute that, “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson joined in dissenting from the ruling.
The majority decision, “announces that Texas may run next year’s elections with a map the District Court found to have violated our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting,” said Justice Kagan, the author of the dissent.
“Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge-that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right,” she continued.
Historically, the party of the president loses seats in the House during the midterm elections. Donald Trump asked Texas to redraw its map so that there would be five Republican districts added. Although lawmakers were cautious that the redistricting would move red voters from red districts to blue districts hoping that those voters could turn the district red, they eventually gave in to the whimsy of mid-decade redistricting.
In July, the Department of Justice told Texas that four of its districts were unconstitutional because they lacked a single racial majority and warned the state to address the “racial gerrymandering.”
In response, Gov. Abbott, R-TX, made the state legislature redraw the maps. The new maps were adopted in August and may help Republicans win 30 of 38 seats.
