🔗 Share this article

Through a per curiam order, the nation's top court permitted Texas to implement a newly configured congressional map that is projected to include as many as five new Republican-leaning districts. The 6-3 decision, issued on Thursday, approves a appeal by the state to lift a federal judge's injunction that had rejected the redistricting plan in November.

Justices' Explanation

The district court wrongly interjected itself into an ongoing primary campaign, generating significant confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections, the order stated in justifying its ruling.

The federal court had previously found that Texas had probably sorted voters by their race – a practice known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it adopted the boundaries. It had instructed the state to use the boundaries created after the most recent national count for the next year's election.

Strong Dissenting Opinion

Through a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the court's action. She stated that it disrespected the work of the district court, pointing out that its opinion was written by a judge nominated 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 argued in a dissent co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan added, This court's stay guarantees that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its enhanced political tilt, will dictate next year's elections. And it means that many Texas citizens, unjustly, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has stated consistently, is a infraction of the constitution.

National Redistricting Fight

The ruling occurs during a countrywide battle over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in efforts to reshape the U.S. House map to protect a narrow Republican hold. Usually, map-drawing occurs after a ten-year survey. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a brazen mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer set off a series of events among other states.

Republicans in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted redistricting plans that could add a number of more Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, meanwhile, have countered with their own plans in states like California and Virginia, which could offset those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG welcomed the supreme court ruling. In a comment, he said the order upheld Texas's basic authority to draw a map that ensures representation aligned with his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he added.

On the other hand, opposition party leaders decried the ruling. 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 Democratic election organization.

A leading Democratic figure said the court had yet again damaged its credibility by rubber-stamping a discriminatory 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.