The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated Texas’ electoral map that had been redrawn to add more Republicans to the House of Representatives, giving a boost to President Donald Trump’s quest to keep Republicans in control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
The justices granted a request by Texas officials to lift a lower court ruling that blocked the state from using a map favored by President Trump, potentially shifting up to five House seats currently held by Democrats to Republicans. Lower courts concluded that the map was likely racially discriminatory, violating U.S. Constitutional protections.
Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both houses of Congress. Giving control of the House or Senate to Democrats in the November 2026 elections would jeopardize President Trump’s legislative agenda and open the door for a Democratic-led congressional investigation targeting the president.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes amid a nationwide battle over the redrawing of electoral maps in Republican-run and Democratic-led states to change the demographics of congressional districts to favor partisans.
Justice Samuel Alito on November 21 temporarily put the lower court’s ruling on hold while the Supreme Court considers how to proceed with the case.
Redrawing electoral district boundaries within a state is a process called redistricting. For decades, the Supreme Court has been locked in a legal battle over a practice known as gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines to alienate certain voters and increase the influence of others.
In a 2019 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that gerrymandering for partisan reasons, aimed at increasing one’s own party’s electoral chances and weakening political opponents, cannot be challenged in federal court. But gerrymandering, which is primarily based on race, remains illegal under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
Many Texas Republicans say the new map was designed in response to President Trump’s request to redraw electoral maps to favor partisanship in House races. But an El Paso-based court ruled 2-1 on Nov. 18 that the map likely amounted to illegal racial gerrymandering, siding with civil rights groups that had filed a lawsuit to block the map.
Each of the 50 states is represented in Congress by two U.S. senators, and population determines representation in the 435-seat House of Representatives. California, the most populous state, has the most members in the House of Representatives, with 52 members, followed by Texas, which ranks second with 38 members. Republicans currently hold 25 of the 38 House seats in Texas.
“Racial considerations”
The Texas electoral map at the center of the dispute was passed by the Republican-led Texas Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in August.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who authored the lower court’s decision, wrote that “the ultimate impetus” for Texas to redraw its maps was a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice urging state officials to “introduce racial considerations into what Texas claims is a racially insensitive process.”
Brown, a Trump judicial appointee, wrote that the Justice Department’s analysis was based on the “legally false argument” that the racial composition of four congressional districts in Texas’ previous electoral maps was unconstitutional and needed to be redrawn.
“If the Trump administration had sent a letter to Texas asking it to redraw its congressional maps to improve the performance of Republican candidates, plaintiff organizations would face a far greater burden of showing that race, not partisanship, was the driving force behind the 2025 map,” Brown wrote.
“However, there is nothing in the DOJ letter that speaks from a partisan political perspective,” the judge wrote. “Instead, the letter orders Texas to redraw four electoral districts for one reason alone: the racial demographics of Texas voters.”
“While Texas’ population is only 40% white, white voters control more than 73% of the state’s seats in the state legislature,” the NAACP civil rights organization said in a statement after the ruling.
The court directed that the state’s previous electoral map, approved by the Republican-led Legislature in 2021, be used for the 2026 election.
U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, defeated the court’s majority’s dissent.
“According to Judge Brown’s opinion, the main winners are George Soros and (California Governor) Gavin Newsom,” Smith wrote. “The clear losers are the people of Texas and the rule of law.”
Mr. Soros, a billionaire financier and major Democratic donor, has long been viewed as a villain by Mr. Trump and his political base. Newsom is a prominent Democrat who has said he is considering a run for president in 2028.
The lower court ruling marked the latest setback for President Trump in his bid to tilt the political map. On November 14, the Indiana Republican Party abandoned a legislative session that had been convened to create a new congressional map for the state.
Democratic-controlled California responded to Texas’ redistricting by launching its own initiative targeting five Republican-controlled districts in the state. California voters overwhelmingly approved new maps favoring Democrats in November. The Trump administration sued California to prevent the new congressional map from taking effect.
Redistricting is typically done to reflect population changes as measured by the decennial census, but this year’s redistricting is motivated by partisan advantage.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has already heard arguments in another major case involving race and redistricting during its current term. Conservative judges in a case over Louisiana’s congressional district maps have signaled they intend to water down another key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal law Congress enacted to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
