🔗 Share this article

Through a unattributed decision, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted Texas to use a newly configured congressional district plan that could add several five additional conservative-tilting districts. The six-to-three ruling, handed down on Thursday, upholds a request by the state to lift a district court's ruling that had invalidated the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Rationale

The lower court wrongly interjected itself into an ongoing primary campaign, causing significant confusion and disrupting the fine federal-state balance in elections, the order stated in explaining its action.

The district court had earlier ruled that Texas had probably classified voters according to their race – a practice known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the new maps. It had ordered the state to employ the maps drawn after the 2020 census for the forthcoming election.

Strong Dissent

With a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court's action. She contended that it undermined the work of the district court, noting that its decision was crafted 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 stated in a dissent supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The justice went on, The majority's order solidifies that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its increased partisan advantage, will control next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas voters, for no good reason, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has stated year in and year out, is a breach of the law of the land.

National Map-Drawing Battle

This decision comes amid a countrywide contest over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in campaigns to alter the U.S. House map to secure a fragile Republican majority. Usually, map-drawing occurs after a new decade's census. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to proceed with a aggressive mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer set off a chain reaction among other states.

Conservative legislators in including North Carolina and Missouri have also approved redistricting plans that are estimated to yield a number of more GOP-friendly seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have countered with revised boundaries in including California and Virginia, which could offset those projected gains.

Political Reactions

The Texas AG hailed the supreme court ruling. In a comment, he said the order defended Texas's basic authority to draw a map that secures representation supportive of his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he stated.

On the other hand, opposition party officials lamented 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 chair of a major party election organization.

Another top House figure argued the court had yet again damaged 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 concluded.