US Supreme Court revives pro-Republican Texas voting map

Map at issue set boundaries of Texas US House districts

Redesigned map aimed to help Republicans in 2026 elections

Lower court blocked map as likely racially discriminatory

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court revived on Thursday a redrawn Texas electoral map designed to add more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives, boosting President Donald Trump’s quest for his party to keep control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

The justices granted a request by Texas officials to lift a lower court’s ruling that had blocked the state from using the Trump-backed map, which could flip as many as five currently Democratic-held U.S. House seats to Republicans. The lower court concluded that the map likely was racially discriminatory in violation of U.S. constitutional protections.

Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress. Ceding control of either the House or Senate to the Democrats in the November 2026 elections would endanger Trump’s legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations targeting the president.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes amid a nationwide battle unfolding in Republican-governed and Democratic-led states involving the redrawing of electoral maps to change the population composition of congressional districts for partisan advantage.

Justice Samuel Alito on November 21 temporarily paused the lower court’s ruling as the Supreme Court weighed how to proceed with the case.

Redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a state is a process called redistricting. There have been legal fights at the Supreme Court for decades over a practice called gerrymandering - the redrawing of district boundaries in order to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others.

The Supreme Court in a 2019 ruling declared that gerrymandering for partisan reasons - to boost the electoral chances of one’s own party and weaken one’s political opponent - cannot be challenged in federal courts. But gerrymandering driven primarily by race remains unlawful under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law and 15th Amendment prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.

Many Texas Republican lawmakers have said the new map was devised in response to Trump’s request to redraw electoral maps for a partisan advantage in House races. But the El Paso-based court ruled 2-1 on November 18 that the map likely amounted to an unlawful racial gerrymander, siding with civil rights groups that sued to block it.

Each of the 50 U.S. states is represented in Congress by two U.S. senators, with representation in the 435-seat House based on population. California, the most-populous state, has the most House members with 52, while Texas is second with 38. Republicans currently hold 25 of 38 U.S. House seats in Texas.

‘RACIAL CONSIDERATIONS’

The Texas electoral map at the center of the dispute was passed by the Republican-led Texas legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott in August.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who authored the lower court’s ruling, wrote that “what ultimately spurred” Texas to redraw its map was a letter from the U.S. Justice Department urging state officials to “inject racial considerations into what Texas insists was a race-blind process.”

Brown, a Trump judicial appointee, wrote that the Justice Department’s analysis was based on the “legally incorrect assertion” that the racial composition of four Texas congressional districts in the state’s previous electoral map was unconstitutional and that they must be redrawn.

“Had the Trump administration sent Texas a letter urging the state to redraw its congressional map to improve the performance of Republican candidates, the plaintiff groups would then face a much greater burden to show that race - rather than partisanship - was the driving force behind the 2025 map,” Brown wrote.

“But nothing in the DOJ (Department of Justice) letter is couched in terms of partisan politics,” the judge wrote. “The letter instead commands Texas to change four districts for one reason and one reason alone: the racial demographics of the voters who live there.”

The NAACP civil rights group noted in a statement after the ruling that “the state of Texas is only 40% white, but white voters control over 73% of the state’s congressional seats.”

The court directed that the state’s previous electoral map, approved by the Republican-led legislature in 2021, be used in the 2026 elections.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, broke with the court’s majority in a dissenting opinion.

“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and (California Governor) Gavin Newsom,” Smith wrote. “The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”

Soros, a billionaire financier and major Democratic donor, has long been considered a villain by Trump and his political base. Newsom is a prominent Democrat who has said he is considering a 2028 presidential run.

The lower court’s ruling marked the latest setback in Trump’s push to tilt political maps. Indiana Republicans on November 14 abandoned a legislative session that had been called to enact a new congressional map in that state.

Democratic-governed California reacted to the Texas redistricting by initiating its own effort targeting five Republican-held districts in the state. California voters in November overwhelmingly approved a new map beneficial to Democrats. The Trump administration has sued California to try to stop its new congressional map from taking effect.

Redistricting generally occurs to reflect population changes as measured by the national census conducted each decade, though this year’s redistricting has been motivated by securing partisan advantage.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, during its current term already has heard arguments in another major case involving race and redistricting. The conservative justices in a case involving a map of U.S. House districts in Louisiana signaled their willingness to undercut another key section of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal law enacted by Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting.