🔗 Share this article

Via an per curiam decision, the nation's top court has allowed Texas to use a revised congressional boundary scheme that could add several five additional GOP-friendly districts. The six-to-three decision, released on Thursday, approves a appeal by the state to overturn a federal judge's injunction that had struck down the boundaries in November.

Court's Reasoning

The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, creating much confusion and upsetting the sensitive federal-state balance in elections, the order stated in justifying its decision.

The federal court had previously found that Texas had likely grouped voters based on their race – a act known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it passed the new maps. It had instructed the state to employ the maps created after the most recent national count for the forthcoming election.

Strong Dissenting Opinion

Through a sharply worded objection, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the court's decision. She stated that it disregarded the work of the district court, pointing out that its decision was written by a judge appointed by ex-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 opinion co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan added, Today's ruling solidifies that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its enhanced favoritism, will dictate next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas voters, without justification, will be grouped in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared consistently, is a infraction of the U.S. Constitution.

National Map-Drawing Fight

The court's action occurs during a national fight over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in pushes to reshape the U.S. House map to protect a slim Republican hold. Typically, map-drawing occurs after a ten-year survey. Yet the move by Texas Republicans to proceed with a brazen mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer triggered a series of events among other states.

Conservative legislators in including North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted redistricting plans that might create a number of more GOP-friendly seats. The opposition, for their part, have countered with revised boundaries in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.

Partisan Reactions

The Texas attorney general welcomed the High Court's decision. In a statement, he said the order protected Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that ensures representation aligned with his party. Our state is leading the charge to reclaim the nation, one district and one state at a time, he stated.

On the other hand, opposition party officials lamented the outcome. The Court's approval of this extreme, racially gerrymandered Texas GOP map is profoundly disappointing, said the head of a major party election organization.

A top Democratic leader stated the court had once again 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 concluded.