A sharply divided Supreme Court said Thursday that it would allow Texas to use a new congressional map that targets five seats held by Democrats in next year's midterms. The brief, unsigned order paused a ruling from a lower court that had found the state’s new map was likely an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and ordered the state to use its map from 2021. The order hinted the Supreme Court would not take part in a rising wave of redistricting “in ways that are predicted to favor the State’s dominant political party” that started with Texas’ passage of a new map in August. The order Thursday said, “based on our preliminary evaluation of this case,” the three-judge panel that made the ruling committed two serious errors when it found the state had likely improperly used race to draw the lines of four of the five most changed congressional districts in the new map. First, the lower court “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature,” the order said. And second, the lower court did not require an alternative map without drawing lines for racial reasons. And the lower court violated a rule that it should not alter the election rules on the eve of an election, the order states. “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsettingthe delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the Supreme Court order states. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. previously had temporarily paused the lower court ruling ahead of a Dec. 8 candidate filing deadline. Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, wrote separately to justify the decision. Despite the lower court citing multiple statements from lawmakers about the racial reasons for the map, Alito wrote “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.” And Alito wrote that he would not delay the decision by writing a detailed response to the dissent because “Texas needs certainty on which map will govern the 2026 midterm elections.” Justice Elena Kagan, joined by the two other justices in the court's liberal wing, dissented from the decision and criticized the majority for second guessing the district court. “And this Court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution,” Kagan wrote. Republicans in the state legislature passed the new map in August after months of pressure from the Trump administration and a letter from the Justice Department stating that several of the state’s congressional districts violated the Voting Rights Act. Litigants in an ongoing lawsuit alleging Voting Rights Act violations by the state in the first map that legislators drew after the 2020 census added the second map to the lawsuit. The map’s passage also touched off a redistricting arms race, as California, Missouri, North Carolina and other states have drawn new maps or started the redistricting process. The case is Greg Abbott et al. v. League of United Latin American Citizens et al.
