Via an unattributed decision, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to implement a revised congressional map that could add up to five additional conservative-tilting districts. The 6-3 ruling, released on Thursday, approves a appeal by the state to overturn a lower court's block that had struck down the new map in November.
The federal judge wrongly interjected itself into an active primary campaign, creating much confusion and disturbing the sensitive federal-state balance in elections, the justices wrote in detailing its ruling.
That lower court had previously found that Texas had likely grouped voters according to their race – a act known as racial gerrymandering – when it adopted the redistricting plan. It had mandated the state to revert to the maps created after the 2020 census for the next year's election.
Through a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's ruling. She contended that it disregarded the work of the lower court, noting that its opinion was written 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 argued in a dissent co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Kagan added, The majority's order ensures that Texas's new map, with all its increased favoritism, will dictate next year's elections. And it means that many Texas residents, without justification, will be sorted in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has declared repeatedly, is a infraction of the constitution.
The ruling comes amid a countrywide battle over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in campaigns to alter the U.S. House map to protect a fragile Republican majority. Usually, redistricting happens after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to proceed with a brazen mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer sparked a series of events among other states.
GOP lawmakers in including North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted redistricting plans that are estimated to yield several more GOP-friendly seats. Democrats, in response, have responded with their own plans in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.
The Texas top lawyer welcomed the High Court's decision. In a comment, he said the order upheld Texas's prerogative to draw a map that guarantees representation favorable to Republicans. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he added.
On the other hand, opposition party leaders criticized the ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the leader of a major party campaign committee.
Another leading Democratic leader argued the court had yet again eroded its legitimacy by rubber-stamping 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 concluded.
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