🔗 Share this article

In a unsigned order, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to employ a revised congressional boundary scheme that may create up to five additional Republican-leaning districts. The six-to-three decision, released on Thursday, upholds a request by the state to overturn a lower court's ruling that had struck down the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Explanation

The district court wrongly interjected itself into an active primary campaign, generating significant confusion and upsetting the fine balance of power in elections, the supreme court said in detailing its decision.

That lower court had determined that Texas had likely sorted voters according to their race – a method known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it adopted the boundaries. It had ordered the state to employ the boundaries created after the last decennial survey for the forthcoming election.

Strong Dissenting Opinion

With a strongly worded objection, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the court's ruling. She stated that it disregarded the work of the lower court, observing that its opinion was actually authored by a judge nominated by ex-President Donald Trump.

While our court is superior in jurisdiction, we are not superior in making these fact-intensive determinations, Kagan argued in a dissent co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justice went on, The majority's order solidifies that Texas's new map, with all its increased political tilt, will control next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas voters, for no good reason, will be grouped in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared consistently, is a breach of the constitution.

Countrywide Map-Drawing Fight

The court's action is part of a nationwide fight over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a crucial component in efforts to transform the U.S. House map to bolster a slim Republican control. Usually, map-drawing occurs after a ten-year survey. Yet the action by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold mid-cycle redistricting earlier this year set off a chain reaction among other states.

Conservative legislators in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also approved new maps that are estimated to yield several additional GOP-friendly seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have countered with new maps in states like California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG welcomed the supreme court ruling. In a release, he said the order upheld Texas's prerogative to draw a map that secures representation favorable to Republicans. 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 ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the head of a major Democratic election organization.

Another leading House leader said the court had another time damaged its standing by upholding 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 stated.