Supreme Court docket lets Texas use gerrymandered U.S. Home map : NPR

The Supreme Court docket has cleared the best way for Texas to make use of a brand new congressional map that would assist Republicans win 5 extra U.S. Home seats within the 2026 midterm election.

The choice launched Thursday boosts the GOP’s probabilities of preserving its slim majority within the Home of Representatives amid an unprecedented gerrymandering struggle launched by President Trump, who has been pushing Texas and different GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to profit Republicans.

The excessive court docket’s unsigned order follows Texas’ emergency request for the justices to pause a three-judge panel’s ruling blocking the state’s lately redrawn map.

After holding a nine-day listening to in October, that panel discovered challengers of the brand new map are more likely to show in a trial that the map violates the Structure by discriminating in opposition to voters based mostly on race.

In its majority opinion — authored by a Trump nominee — the panel cited a letter from the Division of Justice and a number of public statements by key Republican state lawmakers that recommended their map-drawer manipulated the racial demographics of voting districts to remove present districts the place Black and Latino voters collectively make up the bulk. For the following yr’s midterms, the panel ordered Texas to maintain utilizing the congressional districts the state’s GOP-controlled legislature drew in 2021.

However in Texas’ submitting to the Supreme Court docket, the state claimed the lawmakers weren’t motivated by race and had been targeted as an alternative on drawing new districts which are extra more likely to elect Republicans.

What the Supreme Court docket stated 

In its Thursday determination to aspect with Texas, the Supreme Court docket stated the panel “didn’t honor the presumption of legislative good religion by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial proof in opposition to the legislature.”

The excessive court docket additionally discovered that, given the discharge of the panel’s ruling in the midst of Texas’ candidate submitting interval, the decrease court docket had “improperly inserted itself into an energetic major marketing campaign, inflicting a lot confusion and upsetting the fragile federal-state stability in elections.”

In a dissenting opinion, nevertheless, Supreme Court docket Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court docket’s majority for reversing the panel’s determination after a “perusal, over a vacation weekend, of a chilly paper document.”

The excessive court docket’s determination “ensures that many Texas residents, for no good purpose, will likely be positioned in electoral districts due to their race,” wrote Kagan, who was joined by the court docket’s two different liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “And that outcome, as this Court docket has pronounced yr in and yr out, is a violation of the Structure.”

In November, after the panel blocked the brand new map, Justice Samuel Alito allowed Texas to quickly reinstate it whereas the Supreme Court docket reviewed the state’s emergency request.

Texas state Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton, a Republican, cheered the Supreme Court docket’s ruling on Thursday, saying in a press release that the GOP-drawn map “displays the political local weather of our state and is an enormous win for Texas and each conservative who’s bored with watching the left attempt to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”

Democrats criticized the excessive court docket. In a press release, U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee, stated in a press release that the “individuals of Texas don’t desire this map, but it surely was put in place on the behest of nationwide Republicans who’re determined to cling to their majority within the Home of Representatives by decimating minority voting alternative.”

Texas kicked off a redistricting struggle

The mid-decade redistricting plan Texas Republicans handed in August sparked a counter response by Democratic leaders in California, the place voters in a particular election in November accepted a brand new congressional map that would assist Democrats achieve 5 further Home seats. A court docket listening to for a authorized problem to that map is ready for Dec. 15.

The remainder of the redistricting panorama stays unsettled as properly. Lawsuits are difficult new gerrymanders in locations like Missouri, the place there’s additionally a contested referendum effort. And different states, together with Florida, Indiana and Virginia, can also pursue new districts previous to the midterms.

Final week, a federal court docket dominated to permit North Carolina’s midterm election to be held underneath a lately redrawn map that would give Republicans an extra seat.

One other wave of congressional redistricting could also be coming quickly relying on what — and when — the Supreme Court docket decides in a voting rights case about Louisiana’s congressional map. After the court docket held a uncommon rehearing for that case in October, some states are looking forward to a possible earlier-than-usual ruling that will permit Republican-led states to attract extra GOP-friendly districts in time for the 2026 midterms.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey