Supreme Court Backs Newly Drawn Texas House Districts.
Via an unsigned order, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to implement a revised congressional district plan that may create several five additional GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 order, handed down on Thursday, grants a request by the state to lift a lower court's injunction that had struck down the new map in November.
Court's Rationale
The district court erroneously placed itself into an ongoing primary campaign, creating significant confusion and disrupting the fine equilibrium in elections, the justices wrote in explaining its ruling.
The district court had earlier ruled that Texas had likely sorted voters by their race – a method known as racial gerrymandering – when it enacted the new maps. It had instructed the state to use the maps established after the most recent national count for the forthcoming election.
Sharp Opposition
With a forcefully written objection, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the court's action. She contended that it disregarded the work of the lower court, noting that its decision was crafted by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.
While our court is superior in jurisdiction, we are not superior in making these fact-intensive determinations, Kagan argued in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She continued, Today's ruling ensures that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its increased favoritism, will dictate next year's elections. And it means that many Texas voters, unjustly, will be placed in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has stated year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution.
Countrywide Redistricting Battle
The ruling is part of a countrywide contest over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a crucial component in efforts to reshape the U.S. House map to secure a narrow Republican hold. Typically, redistricting occurs after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer sparked a series of events among other states.
Republicans in including North Carolina and Missouri have also passed new maps that are estimated to yield several additional Republican-leaning seats. Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed back with their own plans in states like California and Virginia, which might neutralize those potential gains.
Political Responses
Lone Star State top lawyer praised the supreme court ruling. In a release, he said the order protected Texas's basic authority to draw a map that guarantees electoral outcomes favorable to the GOP. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he remarked.
In contrast, Democratic leaders criticized the ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the chair of a major Democratic election organization.
A top House leader stated the court had another time damaged its credibility by rubber-stamping a race-based map. The ruling demonstrates a willingness to subvert democracy. This Texas plan is a partisan, racially biased scheme to undermine voter will, especially in communities of color, he concluded.