The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the southern state of Texas may move forward with using controversial congressional district maps designed to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.
Thursday’s ruling was divided along ideological lines, with the court’s six conservative justices giving the green light to the new map and three liberal justices dissenting together.
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The ruling lifts a lower court’s November order blocking Texas from using the new congressional map. A lower court found that Texas had “racially gerrymandered” its districts in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
But Texas filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, asking for swift action to overturn the hold.
After all, campaigning for the November 2026 midterm elections has already begun, and candidates need to understand where their voters are, the newspaper argued.
In a short, unsigned order, the conservative majority determined that Texas was likely to win “on the merits.”
He also cited case law that says “lower courts generally should not change election rules on the eve of an election.” Otherwise, the order said, it would cause “irreparable harm” to the state.
The map in question has sparked a nationwide scramble to redesign congressional districts ahead of crucial midterm elections.
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling could lead to further attempts to redraw the map in favor of one political party or another.
national trends
The controversy began in June, when reports emerged that President Donald Trump was pushing the Texas Legislature to adopt a new congressional map that would help Republicans pick up five more seats in the House.
Texas is considered one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country due to its large population. There are currently 38 House seats in the state, 25 of which are held by Republicans.
However, the Republican majority in the House as a whole is slim, with Republicans holding only 220 of the 435 seats.
So Democrats are trying to flip the chamber in the 2026 midterm elections, when all congressional districts will have new elections. Left-leaning strategists see President Trump’s weak poll numbers as an opportunity to profit.
Just this week, the polling firm Gallup revealed that the Republican president’s approval rating dropped five points to 36%, the lowest rating of his second term.
But Trump and his allies pushed back. One of their strategies is to encourage partisan redistricting, a process sometimes called gerrymandering.
This trend started with efforts in Texas. Democrats, outnumbered in the state Legislature, tried to halt the process, even leaving the state entirely to avoid voting on a new congressional map.
However, he was eventually forced to return. And in August, Texas’ Republican-led state legislature passed new districts.
This has set off a kind of redistricting arms race across the country, with Republicans and Democrats in other states trying to redraw maps at different angles to win more congressional seats.
Missouri Republicans passed new gerrymandered maps in September, and North Carolina followed suit in October. Republicans are expected to gain one additional House seat in both states.
And in November, California voters approved a voting plan put forward by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that would shut down the state’s Independent Election Commission and replace its work with new partisan maps.
This effort is explicitly aimed at neutralizing any gains made by the Texas Republican Party. The new California map is aimed at helping Democrats pick up five more House seats.
legal dilemma
Partisan redistricting has long been controversial in the United States, with voting rights advocates warning it disenfranchises minority communities.
However, gerrymandering is not technically illegal.
Typically, states draw new congressional districts once every 10 years to reflect demographic changes in the U.S. Census. After all, the number of legislators in each state reflects that state’s total population, and as the number of residents increases or decreases, the number of electoral districts must change accordingly.
In many states, it is up to the legislature to draw these new congressional maps, and the decision is often a partisan issue.
The Supreme Court acknowledged that partisan gerrymandering can threaten democracy, but ruled that federal courts cannot decide whether Congress went too far in redrawing maps.
However, there is one exception. Gerrymandering based on race is prohibited. The U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 both contain protections to ensure that voters are not divided or disenfranchised on the basis of race.
Thus Thursday’s case, Greg Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, was finally heard by the Supreme Court.
In November, the U.S. District Court for Western Texas ruled 2-1 in favor of plaintiffs who argued that the new Texas map was clearly designed to weaken the power of Black and Latino voters in the state.
The court pointed to comments by Trump administration officials and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that appeared to target nonwhite-majority congressional districts.
But the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the district court “failed to respect the legislative presumption of good faith.” It also said the statements referenced in the lower court’s judgment were “vague” and “circumstantial evidence.”
Right-wing Justice Samuel Alito went a step further, arguing that it is difficult to disentangle what constitutes legal gerrymandering and what constitutes racial discrimination.
“The correlation between race and partisan preferences makes it easy for litigants to exploit racial gerrymandering claims for partisan purposes,” Alito wrote.
If the motivation behind the new Texas map is simply based on race, Alito argued, it’s up to the plaintiffs to show how the partisan map differs from a race-based map.
Race to midterm elections
Republican politicians were quick to praise Thursday’s ruling as vindication of their efforts.
“We won! Texas is officially and legally redder,” Gov. Abbott wrote on his social media accounts.
“The Supreme Court has restored the Congressional redistricting map passed in Texas and added five additional Republican seats. The new map better aligns our representation in Washington, D.C., with Texas values.”
Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton emphasized efforts to protect the Republican map.
“In the face of Democrats’ attempts to abuse the judicial system and steal the House, I have defended Texans’ fundamental right to draw maps that ensure Republican representation,” he said in a statement posted online.
“Texas is paving the way for us to take back our country, district by district, state by state.”
But in a scathing dissent, Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether her colleagues on the Supreme Court thoroughly considered the evidence.
She contrasted the lower courts’ approach with the high court’s hasty approach.
“The district court conducted a nine-day hearing, heard testimony from nearly 20 witnesses, introduced thousands of pieces of evidence, and reviewed a resulting fact record of approximately 3,000 pages,” Kagan wrote.
“And after considering all the evidence, we decided the answer was clear: Texas sharply divided its people along racial lines to create a new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments.”
Kagan pointed out that the district court explained its reasons in a lengthy 160-page decision, rather than just a short emergency order.
“But this court reversed that decision based on a review of outstanding paper records over a holiday weekend,” Kagan said. “We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not better than the district court at making fact-based decisions like this.”
Despite the legal setback, plaintiffs and other advocates in Thursday’s lawsuit vowed to continue fighting against Texas’ redistricting efforts.
“Voters should choose politicians, not the other way around,” Texas Rep. James Talarico, a Democrat, said in a statement after Thursday’s ruling.
“No matter what Donald Trump and his handpicked Supreme Court throw our way, we’re going to keep fighting.”
The Trump administration itself is in the midst of a court challenge to California’s partisan redistricting efforts. These proceedings are still ongoing.
