🔗 Share this article

In a per curiam ruling, the nation's top court cleared the way for Texas to use a revised congressional boundary scheme that could add up to five additional GOP-friendly districts. The six-to-three decision, released on Thursday, approves a petition by the state to set aside a lower court's injunction that had invalidated the new map in November.

Justices' Explanation

The lower court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, creating significant confusion and disrupting the sensitive federal-state balance in elections, the supreme court said in explaining its action.

The district court had previously found that Texas had likely classified voters by their race – a method known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it passed the redistricting plan. It had ordered the state to revert to the maps created after the last decennial survey for the forthcoming election.

Sharp Dissent

Through a sharply worded objection, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's action. She argued that it undermined the work of the lower court, noting that its ruling was actually authored by a judge selected by ex-President Donald Trump.

Our position is above the district court, but our capability is not greater for resolving such fact-driven issues, Kagan stated in a opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan added, The majority's order ensures that Texas's new map, with all its boosted favoritism, will control next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas citizens, unjustly, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced consistently, is a infraction of the law of the land.

National Map-Drawing Battle

The court's action comes amid a countrywide battle over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in campaigns to alter the U.S. House map to bolster a narrow Republican majority. Ordinarily, redistricting happens after a decennial population count. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to proceed with a bold mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer sparked a chain reaction among other states.

Conservative legislators in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also passed new maps that are estimated to yield several additional conservative seats. The opposition, for their part, have pushed back with new maps in including California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

Lone Star State top lawyer praised the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order protected Texas's basic authority to draw a map that ensures electoral outcomes aligned with the GOP. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he remarked.

Conversely, opposition party representatives decried the decision. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the head of a major party election organization.

Another top House figure stated the court had another time damaged its credibility by rubber-stamping 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 stated.