🔗 Share this article

Through a per curiam ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas to use a revised congressional boundary scheme that is projected to include as many as five additional GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 order, released on Thursday, approves a appeal by the state to set aside a lower court's injunction that had struck down the new map in November.

Justices' Reasoning

The district court improperly inserted itself into an ongoing primary campaign, creating considerable confusion and disrupting the fine federal-state balance in elections, the order stated in explaining its decision.

That lower court had earlier ruled that Texas had likely sorted voters according to their race – a method known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it adopted the new maps. It had mandated the state to use the districts created after the most recent national count for the upcoming election.

Strong Opposition

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's action. She contended that it disregarded the work of the district court, observing that its ruling was crafted by a judge selected by ex-President Donald Trump.

We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision, Kagan stated in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justice went on, The majority's order ensures that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its boosted partisan advantage, will control next year's elections. And it means that many Texas residents, for no good reason, will be grouped in electoral districts based on their race. And that result, as this court has stated year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution.

National Redistricting Struggle

This decision comes amid a national fight over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in campaigns to transform the U.S. House map to protect a narrow Republican majority. Usually, redistricting happens after a decennial population count. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to proceed with a bold mid-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a series of events among other states.

Conservative legislators in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted new maps that could add several more Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, in response, have countered with new maps in including California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG welcomed the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order defended Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that secures electoral outcomes aligned with the GOP. Our state is leading the charge to reclaim the nation, one district and one state at a time, he remarked.

In contrast, Democratic representatives decried the ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the chair of a major party campaign committee.

Another top House figure argued the court had once again eroded its standing by approving a race-based map. This decision from the Court's far-right bloc proves extremists are willing to rig elections. The Texas map is a discriminatory power grab targeting Black and Latino voters, he concluded.