Supreme Court allows Texas to use newly drawn congressional district map for 2026 midterm elections
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court stepped in on Thursday to keep Texas on track for next year’s House elections by letting the state’s GOP‑aligned congressional map, championed by former President Donald Trump, stay in play despite a lower‑court ruling that suggested the scheme might discriminate on racial grounds.
The decision came after the Texas Legislature lodged an emergency request, noting that voters were already being assigned to the new districts with primary elections scheduled for March. The Court’s order effectively pauses the 2‑1 ruling that had blocked the map until the full bench reaches a final verdict on the case. Justice Samuel Alito had earlier put a temporary hold on the order while the Court reviewed the appeal.
In the broader picture, the justices have already overturned similar redistricting objections in Alabama and Louisiana weeks before elections. Texas’s redrawn districts, approved last summer at Trump’s urging, were designed to give Republicans five extra seats in the U.S. House. That move ignited a nationwide contest over district lines, with Missouri and North Carolina following suit to add a seat each, while California voters passed a ballot initiative granting Democrats five seats of their own.
The revised maps are now under legal scrutiny in California and Missouri. A three‑judge panel allowed the North Carolina draw to be used in the 2026 cycle. Amid these challenges, the Trump administration is suing to block California’s new lines but simultaneously urging the Supreme Court to uphold Texas’s configuration.
Separately, the Court is weighing a Louisiana case that could further curb race‑based districting under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The outcome could ripple through the current round of redistricting, though its impact remains uncertain.
In Texas, U.S. District Judges Jeffrey V. Brown and David Guaderrama had concluded that the new plan likely erodes the political influence of Black and Latino voters, violating constitutional principles. Brown, appointed by Trump, and Guaderrama, appointed by former President Barack Obama, penned a joint opinion. Brown remarked, “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map,” noting that “Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan‑appointed appeals court judge on the same panel, took issue with Brown’s timing and content, labeling the majority opinion as “pernicious judicial misbehavior.” He also lampooned the decision, suggesting it would merit a “Nobel Prize for Fiction” if such a prize existed. Smith went so far as to declare, “The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” identifying the “obvious losers” as “the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”
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