The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily frozen a lower court’s order that found Texas’s 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race.
An administrative stay signed Friday by Justice Samuel Alito suspends the injunction for at least several days while the high court weighs whether the new, Republican‑leaning map may be used in next year’s midterm elections. The order halts enforcement of the lower court decision while litigation continues.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton welcomed the move, saying activists are “abusing the judicial system” in efforts to overturn the GOP plan. The stay means Texas will provisionally revert to its 2025 congressional map for voting until the Supreme Court or lower courts resolve the dispute, The Texas Tribune reported.
The map at issue was drawn in August as part of a push tied to former President Donald Trump to protect a narrow Republican majority in the House for the 2026 midterms. State Republicans said the plan was intended to produce five additional GOP seats. But a three‑judge federal panel in El Paso, split 2‑1, found this week that civil rights groups representing Black and Hispanic voters were likely to succeed in proving the map is racially discriminatory and therefore violates constitutional protections.
Texas was the first state to adopt a Trump‑backed redistricting plan; Missouri and North Carolina have since approved new maps that would each add a Republican seat. In response, California voters passed a ballot measure creating five districts favorable to Democrats. New maps in California, Missouri and North Carolina are also facing legal challenges.
Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress. Losing control of the House or Senate in the November 2026 elections could jeopardize Republican and Trump legislative priorities for the remainder of his term.
The dispute underscores long‑running litigation over gerrymandering. In 2019 the Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal courts, but it has continued to make clear that maps drawn predominantly on the basis of race violate the Constitution. Those rulings invoke the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.