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Texas Gets Nod from Supreme Court
to Stage Congress Races on New Map
Capitol Inside
December 4, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court gave Texas Republicans the green light on Thursday to conduct the 2026 congressional elections on a new map that a federal appellate panel had derailed in a move that sparked substantial chaos and uncertainty in the countdown to the filing deadline for the primary ballots.
The nation's highest court overturned the lower court's finding of the Texas redistricting plan as an unconstitutional product of racial gerrymandering. The Supreme Court majority - in so doing - upheld Texas Republicans' assertions that the mapmaking process was based on no other purpose beyond partisan gain.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” according to the Supreme Court ruling that none of the justices signed.
But the court's three liberal members - Justices Elena Kegan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson - issued a scathing dissent in the Texas case.
“Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge—that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right,” Kagan wrote in the dissenting opinion that Sotomayer and Jackson both signed. “And today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”
While the high court did not close the books completely on the fight on the new map here, the ruling cleared the way for state and local officials to stage the congressional elections here in 2026 without the threat of having the vote delayed in a replay of a fight over legislative maps in Texas in 2011 and 2012. The Supreme Court intervened just four days before a Monday deadline for candidate applications for spots on the ballots for the March 3 primary election.
The new Texas map was designed to give the GOP five additional seats in a congressional delegation that currently has 28 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Governor Greg Abbott - acting on orders from President Donald Trump - fired the opening shot in the redistricting war in July when he added redistricting to the agenda of a special legislative session.
But the Supreme Court edict today represents a singular victory in a larger battle that the Texas Republicans could lose if Democrats in California flip more U.S. House seats than the Republicans manage to do in Texas on a map that was conceived as a counter punch for the GOP in the Lone Star State.
The Republicans in Austin based their projections on the support that Trump received in selective Texas districts in 2024 when his popularity was peaking. That doesn't appear to be a credible gauge of what to expect in the upcoming midterm vote based on polls and recent elections in key states. A net gain of two or three seats for the GOP might be a more realistic outlook at this point on the new Texas map.
Three high court members disputed the dissenting jurists analysis in a response composed by Justice Samuel Alito with signatures from Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “First, the dissent does not dispute—because it is indisputable—that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Alito wrote in the retort.
more to come ...
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