🔗 Share this article

Via an per curiam decision, the nation's top court permitted Texas to employ a redrawn congressional boundary scheme that may create as many as five new GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 order, issued on Thursday, upholds a appeal by the state to set aside a lower court's ruling that had invalidated the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Explanation

The federal judge erroneously placed itself into an ongoing primary campaign, creating considerable confusion and disrupting the sensitive federal-state balance in elections, the justices wrote in detailing its decision.

The federal court had previously found that Texas had probably sorted voters according to their race – a act known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the new maps. It had ordered the state to use the maps drawn after the most recent national count for the forthcoming election.

Strong Dissenting Opinion

With a strongly worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the majority's ruling. She contended that it disregarded the work of the lower court, pointing out that its opinion was crafted by a judge selected by ex-President Donald Trump.

While our court is superior in jurisdiction, we are not superior in making these fact-intensive determinations, Kagan wrote in a opinion supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She continued, Today's ruling guarantees that Texas's new map, with all its increased partisan advantage, will govern next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced repeatedly, is a breach of the constitution.

Countrywide Map-Drawing Fight

The ruling comes amid a nationwide battle over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a crucial component in campaigns to alter the U.S. House map to bolster a fragile Republican majority. Usually, redistricting takes place after a new decade's census. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to proceed with a brazen off-cycle redistricting earlier this year set off a chain reaction among other states.

Conservative legislators in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted redistricting plans that could add a number of more Republican-leaning seats. Democratic lawmakers, for their part, have pushed back with new maps in including California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.

Political Responses

The Texas top lawyer welcomed the supreme court ruling. In a statement, he said the order upheld Texas's prerogative to draw a map that ensures representation aligned with Republicans. We are setting the precedent for restoring our country, through each electoral district and individual state, he stated.

In contrast, opposition party leaders decried 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 leader of a major Democratic campaign committee.

Another senior Democratic leader said the court had once again shredded its standing by approving a racially gerrymandered 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 stated.