🔗 Share this article

In a unattributed order, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted Texas to employ a redrawn congressional map that could add several five new GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 order, handed down on Thursday, grants a appeal by the state to overturn a lower court's injunction that had struck down the new map in November.

Court's Reasoning

The federal judge erroneously placed itself into an ongoing primary campaign, causing considerable confusion and disrupting the fine equilibrium in elections, the order stated in detailing its ruling.

That lower court had determined that Texas had likely grouped voters according to their race – a act known as racial gerrymandering – when it passed the boundaries. It had ordered the state to employ the maps established after the 2020 census for the forthcoming election.

Strong Dissenting Opinion

Through a strongly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the majority's ruling. She argued that it undermined the work of the lower court, observing that its decision was actually authored by a judge selected by former 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 opinion co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

She continued, The majority's order guarantees that Texas's new map, with all its enhanced favoritism, will govern next year's elections. And it ensures that many Texas voters, unjustly, will be placed in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared repeatedly, is a violation of the law of the land.

National Map-Drawing Fight

The court's action comes amid a national contest over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in campaigns to reshape the U.S. House map to secure a fragile Republican control. Usually, redistricting takes place after a ten-year survey. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to initiate a aggressive off-cycle redistricting earlier this year set off a wave among other states.

GOP lawmakers in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also approved redistricting plans that are estimated to yield several additional GOP-friendly seats. Democrats, for their part, have responded with new maps in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those potential gains.

Partisan Responses

Lone Star State attorney general praised the supreme court ruling. In a release, he said the order upheld Texas's prerogative to draw a map that guarantees electoral outcomes aligned with his party. Our state is leading the charge to reclaim the nation, one district and one state at a time, he added.

Conversely, opposition party officials decried the decision. 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 head of a major Democratic campaign committee.

Another leading Democratic figure said the court had another time damaged its credibility by upholding a race-based 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 added.