🔗 Share this article

In a per curiam decision, the nation's top court permitted Texas to use a newly configured congressional map that may create up to five additional GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 decision, issued on Thursday, grants a petition by the state to lift a federal judge's block that had invalidated the boundaries in November.

Justices' Reasoning

The federal judge improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, generating considerable confusion and disrupting the delicate balance of power in elections, the supreme court said in explaining its decision.

The district court had previously found that Texas had likely sorted voters according to their race – a practice known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the new maps. It had mandated the state to revert to the districts drawn after the last decennial survey for the forthcoming election.

Strong Opposition

In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the court's ruling. She stated that it disregarded the work of the district court, noting that its decision was actually authored by a judge selected by former 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.

Kagan added, This court's stay guarantees that Texas's new map, with all its boosted favoritism, will govern next year's elections. And it means that many Texas residents, for no good reason, will be grouped in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has declared repeatedly, is a violation of the law of the land.

Countrywide Redistricting Battle

The ruling comes amid a nationwide battle over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in efforts to transform the U.S. House map to bolster a fragile Republican majority. Ordinarily, map-drawing occurs after a ten-year survey. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer sparked a wave among other states.

GOP lawmakers in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also passed new maps that might create a number of more conservative seats. Democratic lawmakers, in response, have countered with new maps in states like California and Virginia, which might neutralize those projected gains.

Political Reactions

The Texas top lawyer praised the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order defended Texas's prerogative to draw a map that guarantees representation supportive of his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he remarked.

In contrast, opposition party leaders decried the outcome. It's incredibly disappointing that the Court has rubber stamped a map enacted by Texas Republicans which, simply put, is an extreme, racially gerrymandered map, said the leader of a major party election organization.

Another top House leader said the court had yet again eroded its legitimacy by rubber-stamping a discriminatory 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 added.