On Thursday (December 4), the Supreme Court allowed Texas Republicans to move forward with next year’s congressional elections under a redistricting map that a federal court said likely discriminates against Black and Latino voters.
According to the AP, the ruling temporarily pauses a lower-court decision that blocked the map and gives the state approval to use it while the legal battle continues.
The order came as Texas begins candidate qualifying for March primaries, and follows an emergency request from the state. Justice Samuel Alito had briefly halted the lower-court ruling earlier this week while the full court reviewed the case. The justices did not issue a written opinion explaining the decision.
The approved map was enacted last summer at the urging of President Donald Trump and is designed to give Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House, bolstering the party’s slim majority.
Texas was the first state to implement a redistricting plan aligned with Trump’s demands, followed by Missouri and North Carolina. Each state drew new maps favoring Republican gains, while California voters passed a ballot initiative to add five seats for Democrats in response.
The Texas map remains under review after two federal judges — U.S. District Judges Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee, and David Guaderrama, appointed by former President Barack Obama — ruled that the districts likely violate the Constitution by diluting the political power of voters of color.
Brown wrote that, “politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map,” but said evidence showed “it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” The ruling prompted a sharply worded dissent from Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee on the panel. Smith accused Brown of “pernicious judicial misbehavior” and claimed the opinion would qualify for a “Nobel Prize for Fiction, if there were such an award.”
He added, “The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and Gavin Newsom… The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”
The justices are also weighing a separate case from Louisiana that could further restrict race-based district protections under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a decision that could influence challenges to maps in Texas, California, Missouri, and other states.
The Supreme Court’s order remains temporary and leaves the door open for a final ruling later in the term.
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