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

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I was afraid of this. The filing deadline is Monday, Dec 8. The gerrymandered maps will be used.

Link to tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/politics/supreme-court-allows-texas-to-use-trump-backed-congressional-map-in-midterms

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.”

...The legal battles over Trump’s mid-decade congressional redistricting strategy will continue to play out in coming weeks. Last week, the Justice Department 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.

[Silent Type]

1. Hope California redistricting gets similar consideration.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. I was afraid of this

Link to tweet

[haele]

3. Well. Then there can be no back-door complaints about California's prop 50.

Because that was written as a "push come to shove" response.

Supreme Court just insured there's going to be a Civil War. They really want their Heritage Foundation Gilead.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

4. And will shoot down California's.

[bluestarone]

5. Fuck this court!

They are TSF catch - 22! 3 more years folks.

[WestMichRad]

6. So much for the "Purcell Principle."

At least, when it breaks in the R’a favor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purcell_principle

[hurl]

7. Given what we saw in Tennessee

I'm hoping that the gerrymander becomes a dummymander in some of the districts where they thinned out their majority maybe too much. It's not much hope, but about all we can have for now.

[Deminpenn]

14. If TX made their new R favored districts

R+10-12 or less, they could lose them all. That is exactly what I expect to happen.

[B.See]

8. Of course they did. If we still don't know

who and WHAT these fkrs are, we never will.

[everyonematters]

9. So, the gerrymander war continues with more rigged districts and more voter apathy, and it wont save

the Republicans from a wipeout in 26. I don't blame the Democrats for what they are doing. The SCOTUS could have stopped it. In Texas, it will probably backfire on the GOP because they are counting on Hispanics to vote for them.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/11/07/latinos-swing-left-texas-gerrymandering/

[LetMyPeopleVote]

10. Deadline Legal Blog-Supreme Court sides with Texas in challenge to congressional map deemed discriminatory

A lower court ruling authored by a Trump-appointed judge said the new map was likely an illegal racial gerrymander.

BREAKING: Supreme Court sides with Texas in challenge to congressional map deemed discriminatory

— MS NOW (@ms.now) 2025-12-04T23:23:52.723Z

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/texas-redistricting-supreme-court-gerrymander

The Supreme Court sided with Texas over civil rights groups in an emergency challenge to the Donald Trump-backed congressional map that aimed to benefit Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The court’s three Democratic appointees dissented from the Republican-appointed majority’s decision to put the Trump-backed map in play on Thursday. The majority granted Texas emergency relief because, it said, the state would likely succeed in its appeal.

Writing for the dissenting trio, Justice Elena Kagan said the majority’s order “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.”

After a divided three-judge panel deemed the state’s map to be likely racially discriminatory on Nov. 18, Texas filed an emergency appeal to the high court. The appeal initially went to Justice Samuel Alito, the justice assigned to field such requests from that region. On Nov. 21, Alito issued an order temporarily halting the lower court ruling, pending further review by the full bench of justices.

Texas argued that the map it produced over the summer in response to Trump’s call was motivated by politics (which the Supreme Court has allowed), not race. The state noted that California worked to add Democratic seats to its congressional delegation in response to Texas’ move.

[Blaukraut]

11. They will shoot down the CA map with the same argument

In reverse, by ruling that California acted in bad faith and retaliation against Texas.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

12. At least 3 of the conservatives on the court MUST BE on a list!

Fuckers

[Jack Valentino]

17. They're on MY list! I won't say what 'list' that is,

ok, one of them is a 'dead pool 2026' list about which people I bet will die in that year,
and the other one isn't.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. Scathing dissent from Justice Kagan:

Link to tweet

Scathing dissent from Justice Kagan:

"[T]his Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record. 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. That is why we are supposed to use a clear-error standard of review—why we are supposed to uphold the District Court’s decision that race-based line-drawing occurred (even if we would have ruled differently) so long as it is plausible. Without so much as a word about that standard, this Court today announces that Texas may run next year's elections with a map the District Court found to have violated all our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting. 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. And today's order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race. Because this Court's precedents and our Constitution demand better, I respectfully dissent."

[dalton99a]

15. The Trump Supreme Whorehouse doesn't disappoint.

[Jack Valentino]

16. because it failed to honor "the presumption of legislative good faith" by the TEXAS legislature???!!!!!!

THERE IS NO "presumption of legislative good faith"
to which the TEXAS GQP Legislature is entitled!!!!
(as they have proven again and again)!!!!

Stupid fucking "Republican Rigged" Supreme Court---
wriggling out of their own previous decisions about racial gerrymandering with this BULLSHIT---

Well, ok FINE----

As these 5 new Texas districts were drawn based on Latino support
for Trump in 2024, which has completely dissolved and reversed at this point,
I think that the Democratic candidate will win ALL of those!

(AND, as they may have weakened other GQP seats
attempting to achieve their hoped-for result,
they may have thrown other seats into contention,
especially in the face of a BLUE TSUNAMI ) !!!!!

TEXAS is a 'low voter turnout' state---
that has often been cited as the Democratic party's problem in that state--

and I think the national party, and the Texas Democratic party,
should exert every possible resource to turn out
Texas Democrats and independents for the 2026 midterms,
and show the entire country what a Republican dummy-mander looks like!


(What might the Texas election look like,
if the Trump vote is reversed by 13 or 15 percentage points
similar to the recent off-year elections??)


Let 'the Alamo' be defended by Republicans in 2026----
and be overwhelmed by 'the mexicans' who had outlawed slavery---
(in a manner of speaking)!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

18. Here is a good explanation of this decision by Prof. Hasen of the Election Law Blog

I have been following Prof. Hasen for a long time

Breaking: Supreme Court on 6-3 Party Line Vote, Allows Texas to Use Its Re-redistricting Maps for 2026 Congressional Elections electionlawblog.org?p=153359

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen.bsky.social) 2025-12-04T23:11:29.191Z

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=153359

The majority opinion is short and unsigned. It makes essentially two points:

The district court made two legal errors in preliminarily evaluating the merits. First, the district court should have presumed more good faith on Texas’s behalf when they drew the maps, and the failure of the plaintiffs to produce alternative maps (that could achieve the same partisan goals without as much racial sorting) was a “dispositive” or “near dispositive” reason to lose on the merits.

In looking at the other factors for granting a stay, including balancing the hardship of the parties, the Court, without naming Purcell, invokes the Purcell principle on timing. “The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Justice Alito, for himself and Justice Gorsuch briefly concurred to respond to two points in the dissent. It is interesting that he characterizes California’s gerrymander also as a partisan gerrymander, which seems to send a signal to the lower court in that case: “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.” (Disclosure: I have filed this amicus brief in the California case).

The dissenters make a number of arguments on the merits, and on the proper deferential standard of review that is says should apply to a finding of racial predominance, but the timing point is surely right, and I fear that even more re-redistricting will be on the way, perhaps even later in the year if the Supreme Court waters down or kills Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the Callais case.