Washington, D.C. – In a decisive 6-3 ruling that electrified Republican circles and drew fire from civil rights advocates, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the path for Texas to deploy a contentious new congressional district map in the 2026 midterm elections, potentially handing the GOP up to five additional House seats amid President Donald Trump's aggressive push to fortify his party's slim legislative majority. The unsigned emergency order, issued along ideological lines, stayed a November 18 federal district court injunction that had deemed the map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, restoring the boundaries drawn by Texas' Republican-led legislature in August. "The November 18, 2025 order entered by the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas...is stayed," the court declared, emphasizing that Texas was "likely to succeed on the merits" and that the lower tribunal had "failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith."
The decision, which arrived just days before Texas' December 8 candidate filing deadline, averts immediate chaos for aspiring lawmakers who had already mobilized under the new lines. It invokes the Purcell principle – a judicial doctrine cautioning against last-minute election alterations to avoid voter confusion – stating that lower courts "should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election." The majority further chided the district panel for "improperly inserting itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, whose signature sealed the map into law, exulted on X: "We won! Texas is officially—and legally—more red. The Supreme Court restored the congressional redistricting maps passed by Texas that add 5 more Republican seats. The new maps better align our representation in D.C. with the values of Texas." Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed the triumph, proclaiming the "Big Beautiful Map will be in effect for 2026" and that Texas was "paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state." White House officials framed it as a rebuke to judicial overreach: "Federal courts have no right to interfere with a State’s decision to redraw legislative maps for partisan reasons."
The saga traces to July 2025, when the Trump Justice Department fired off a letter to Texas officials, decrying four existing "coalition districts" – where Black and Latino voters form pluralities without a single racial majority – as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders requiring immediate rectification. Citing Voting Rights Act precedents, the DOJ urged a mid-decade redraw, a rarity outside census cycles, to "inject racial considerations" and avert litigation. Abbott convened a special session in August, where GOP lawmakers – heeding Trump's explicit demand for five net Republican gains – retooled all 38 districts, engineering 30 GOP-leaning ones up from 25 under the 2021 configuration. The overhaul fragmented minority strongholds, such as diluting Houston's 18th District (historically Democratic, with 50% Black and 30% Latino voters) into whiter, more conservative suburbs.
Civil rights groups sued in the Western District of Texas, alleging violations of the 14th and 15th Amendments by subordinating traditional redistricting criteria – compactness, contiguity, communities of interest – to racial sorting. After a nine-day October hearing featuring depositions, emails, and session videos, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown – a Trump appointee – authored a 160-page opinion concluding: "Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map." The panel cited Abbott's public nods to the DOJ missive, legislative emails referencing "racial targets" for new districts, and mapmaker testimony admitting race as a "predominant factor" in cracking minority coalitions.
The Supreme Court's liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented vehemently. Kagan, penning the rejoinder, accused the majority of "disserv[ing] the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race," arguing it bypassed "clear error" review and rubber-stamped a "partisan and racially discriminatory power grab." House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries decried the outcome as the court "shredding its credibility by rubber-stamping a racially gerrymandered map," while NAACP President Derrick Johnson blasted Trump's involvement as "rig[ging] the system to steal votes from Black and brown Americans."
This victory caps Trump's nationwide redistricting blitz, a cornerstone of his midterm firewall strategy to insulate the House GOP's three-seat edge against potential Democratic resurgence. Echoing Project 2025 blueprints, the White House has exhorted red states to seize mid-decade opportunities, yielding GOP-favoring overhauls in North Carolina (net +1 seat) and Missouri (pending ballot fight). Democrats retaliated with California's November ballot measure, approved by voters, to redraw its map for up to five blue gains – now ensnared in DOJ litigation. Similar skirmishes brew in Florida, Indiana, and Virginia.
Texas' mapmaking drama unfolded amid summer chaos: Democratic House members staged a quorum break in July, fleeing to New Mexico to block the special session, while protests erupted in Austin over fears of disenfranchising the state's 40% Latino and 13% Black populations. The DOJ's July letter paradoxically ignited the racial claims it sought to preempt, as lawmakers' responses fueled plaintiffs' evidence trove.
While the stay endures through 2026 primaries, full merits review could drag into 2027, leaving the map's fate provisional but potent. For Texas' 19 million voters, the lines redraw not just districts but destinies: Will the "more red" map cement GOP dominance, or expose fractures in a diversifying Lone Star State? As the court prioritizes "race-blind" intent over disparate impacts – a high bar for challengers in an era where politics and demographics entwine – Trump's gambit, once a longshot, now redraws the electoral battlefield, one district at a time.
