Washington – The Supreme Court on Thursday restored for now a newly redrawn Texas congressional map that could give Republicans five additional House seats after the lower court found that some of the new voting lines are racially discriminatory.
The decision said the Supreme Court “repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts generally should not change election rules on the eve of an election” and said the lower court “violated that rule here.”
“The District Court improperly entered into an active primary campaign, causing great confusion and upsetting the delicate balance between federal and state elections,” the Supreme Court said.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented and said the lower court sought to determine whether Texas “achieved its partisan goals through racial gerrymandering by adopting an electoral map tilted toward the Republicans” and found that Texas “substantially segregated its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.”
“The court issued a 160-page opinion detailing its factual findings,” Kagan added. “However, the court reverses this decision based on its review of the paper records over the holiday weekend.” Kagan was referring to the Supreme Court's emergency list, also known as shadow list. This term refers to orders and summary judgments issued by the Court without the full explanations and oral arguments that accompany cases on the regular docket.
“We are a higher court than the District Court, but we are no better when it comes to making that fact-based decision,” Kagan said.
The Supreme Court's decision is a boon for House Republicans and President Trump, who has pushed many GOP-led states to undertake rare mid-decade redistricting to ensure his party maintains its House majority.
That plan was temporarily derailed last month when a divided three-judge panel blocked Texas from using its updated House map for the 2026 election cycle and found that some districts were subject to racial gerrymandering.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, quickly asked the Supreme Court to interveneand Justice Samuel Alito temporarily restored the card while the full court was considering the petition. The high court has now agreed to block a lower court decision allowing Texas to use new district lines for House elections next year.
Texas House Democratic Leader Gene Woo said in a statement: “The Supreme Court today failed the voters of Texas, and they failed American democracy. This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won’t protect minorities even when the evidence stares them in the face.”
