Supreme Court allows Texas to use Trump-backed congressional map in midterms

CNN

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.

The decision could have significant consequences for next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of the House for the final two years of Trump’s presidency. Had Texas been blocked from using its new map, it would have upended Trump’s nationwide push to avoid a Democratic House majority.

The court issued a brief unsigned opinion granting Texas’s request over the objection from the court’s three liberal justices.

In its brief order, the Supreme Court said that a lower court that ruled against the map likely did so in error, in part because it failed to honor “the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.” It also said the lower court had contravened a controversial legal doctrine generally requiring federal courts to stay out of election cases late in the game.

The deadline for Texas to register their candidacies is Monday.

“The District Court violated that rule here,” the court said. “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Though the court’s order was not signed, several justices joined two separate opinions laying out their views.

Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s conservative wing, wrote that it was “indisputable” that the “impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.” His opinion was joined by two other conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

Alito’s point was significant because, if the redistricting was solely based on politics, then federal courts would have no jurisdiction to hear the case. Though Trump had pushed Texas and other states to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, there was a dispute about whether it did so based on race.

In dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision “disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”

“The majority today loses sight of its proper role,” Kagan wrote, asserting that the Supreme Court should have reviewed the lower court’s decision for “clear error,” which she said was never established.

“The majority can reach the result it does – overturning the District Court’s finding of racial line-drawing, even if to achieve partisan goals – only by arrogating to itself that court’s rightful function,” she wrote. “We know better, the majority declares today. I cannot think of a reason why.”

Kagan was joined by the court’s other liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, applauded the decision Thursday.

“The Big Beautiful Map will be in effect for 2026,” he said. “Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state. This map reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”

“Texas is officially – and legally – more red,” said Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in a statement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi praised the decision in a post on X writing, “Federal courts have no right to interfere with a State’s decision to redraw legislative maps for partisan reasons. A federal district court ignored that principle two weeks ago, and the Supreme Court correctly stayed that overreaching decision tonight.”

Democrats, including Texas House of Representatives Minority Leader Rep. Gene Wu, blasted the court’s action.

“The Supreme Court failed Texas voters today, and they failed American democracy,” Wu said. “This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won’t protect minority communities even when the evidence is staring them in the face.”

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the ruling “a serious blow to people of color in Texas.” The group was one of several that had challenged the maps.

“Here we are with an election around the corner and the Supreme Court is allowing Texas to use these sinister maps,” Hewitt said. “Requiring Black and brown Texans to vote under a racially gerrymandered plan sends the message that voting rights and the Constitution’s protections can be rendered meaningless in the face of entrenched power, so long as politicians claim it’s partisan and not racial.”

Texas officials raced to the Supreme Court late last month with an emergency appeal seeking permission to use their new map, which would likely flip five Democratic-held House seats to Republican next year. A lower court blocked that map days earlier, based on a finding that the new boundaries were likely drawn on unconstitutional racial considerations.

Republicans currently hold a three-seat majority in the House and so five seats could be the difference between keeping or losing the speaker’s gavel.

The effort in Texas was initially a response to Trump’s push in several states to eke advantages out the mapmaking in several states to secure a Republican majority in the House. That effort set off an arms race between some red and blue states to redraw boundaries in order to maximize each party’s chances.

Had Texas officials justified the new map based purely on politics, they would almost certainly have had an easy time defending it in federal court. In a 2019 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts would no longer hear claims over partisan gerrymanders. Those machinations, the court said, are better left to the political branches.

Instead, the Texas case became wrapped up in race because of a letter from the Justice Department that urged the state to redraw its map not to help House Republicans but rather to change the racial composition of four districts the department described as “unconstitutional” and said “must be rectified immediately.” In a series of public statements, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, cited the DOJ letter – and concerns over race – as the reason for redrawing the lines.

US District Judge Jeffrey Brown, nominated to the bench by Trump during his first term, eviscerated the Justice Department letter in an opinion last month. States may consider race as one factor when they draw congressional lines, but if it’s the predominant issue driving the mapmaking then those boundaries face the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

“The governor,” Brown wrote for a 2-1 court, “explicitly directed the legislature to redistrict based on race.”

Texas filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court asking for immediate action, claiming that the ruling was causing “chaos” in the state. Congressional hopefuls in Texas must declare their candidacy by December 8. The state’s primaries are set for March.

Much of the debate in the Texas case has revolved around a murky legal doctrine known as the “Purcell principle,” which warns against federal courts making last-minute changes to election rules.

But what counts as “last-minute” and “changes” has never been entirely clear. In the Texas case, plaintiffs said that the map the state approved in 2021 should count as the status quo – not the new map enacted in 2025. But the court applies the Purcell principle to the federal judiciary, not state legislatures.

The Supreme Court invoked the Purcell principle in May 2024 in a case dealing with Louisiana’s congressional districts, allowing that state to use its current map, which includes a second majority Black congressional district. At the time, the court issued a brief, boilerplate order over the dissent of three liberal justices.

While that map was ultimately used in the 2024 election, it is now the subject of a major merits case pending at the Supreme Court. That case threatens to unwind how states, courts and civil rights groups have viewed the role of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to prevent racial discrimination in redistricting. It may also jeopardize majority-Black and heavily Democratic seats in several other states across the country.

“Campaigning had already begun, candidates had already gathered signatures and filed applications to appear on the ballot under the 2025 map, and early voting for the March 3, 2026, primary was only 91 days away,” Texas officials told the high court.

Soon after the emergency appeal was filed, Alito temporarily blocked the lower court ruling with an “administrative” order that was intended to give the justices a few days to review the briefing before issuing a longer-term decision.

Six groups of plaintiffs who sued over the maps responded to Texas on Monday. One of them, the Texas NAACP, warned the Supreme Court against rushing into a decision for the state.

Texas, the group claimed, could have avoided the complicated legal morass it found itself in “simply by following the law and not embracing DOJ’s directive to target minority voters of Texas in a mid-decade redistricting mere months before the deadlines.”

The legal battles over Trump’s mid-decade congressional redistricting strategy will continue to play out in coming weeks. The Justice Department recently sued officials in California over new maps meant to give Democrats in the Golden State an edge next year. A court is set to hear arguments in that case next month.

CNN’s Fredreka Schouten, Casey Gannon and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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