The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Texas to use a new congressional map that could help Republicans win as many as five additional U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
An unsigned order released Thursday granted Texas’s emergency request to pause a three-judge federal panel’s ruling that had blocked the recently redrawn map. That lower court panel, after a nine-day hearing in October, concluded challengers were likely to prove at trial that the map unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of race and ordered Texas to use the congressional districts the state drew in 2021 for the next election cycle.
The panel’s majority opinion, authored by a Trump appellate nominee, relied on a letter from the Justice Department and public statements by key Republican state lawmakers suggesting the map-drawer manipulated district racial demographics to eliminate seats where Black and Latino voters together were the majority. Texas argued to the Supreme Court that those lawmakers were motivated by partisan aims — to draw districts more likely to elect Republicans — not by racial considerations.
In siding with Texas, the Supreme Court said the three-judge panel “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.” The high court also faulted the lower court for issuing its injunction in the middle of Texas’s candidate filing period, which the justices said improperly interfered with an active primary and upset the federal-state balance in election administration.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Kagan accused the majority of reversing the panel’s decision after only a cursory review “over a holiday weekend” and warned the ruling will place “many Texas citizens, for no good reason, … in electoral districts because of their race,” a result she said violates the Constitution.
Earlier this month, after the panel blocked the new map, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily allowed Texas to reinstate it while the Supreme Court considered the state’s emergency application. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton praised Thursday’s decision as a victory for conservatives and said the GOP-drawn map “reflects the political climate of our state.” Democrats condemned the ruling; Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Texans “don’t want this map” and accused national Republicans of using lawsuits to “decimate minority voting opportunity” to protect their House majority.
Texas’s mid-decade redistricting prompted a political and legal counterresponse, including a California special-election-approved congressional map that could net Democrats five additional seats; a court challenge to that California map is scheduled for Dec. 15. Other states with ongoing or potential redistricting battles include Missouri, Florida, Indiana and Virginia. A federal court recently allowed North Carolina to hold its midterm election under a newly redrawn map that could give Republicans an extra seat.
Attention is also on a Supreme Court voting-rights case involving Louisiana’s congressional map. The court held a rare rehearing in October, and some states are watching for an earlier-than-usual ruling that could enable Republican-led legislatures to implement GOP-favoring maps in time for the 2026 midterms.
Edited by Benjamin Swasey