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Via an unattributed decision, the highest judicial body permitted Texas to use a newly configured congressional boundary scheme that could add as many as five new Republican-leaning districts. The 6-3 ruling, handed down on Thursday, upholds a request by the state to overturn a federal judge's injunction that had invalidated the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Reasoning

The lower court erroneously placed itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and disturbing the fine federal-state balance in elections, the supreme court said in detailing its action.

That lower court had previously found that Texas had probably sorted voters by their race – a act known as illegal race-based districting – when it enacted the redistricting plan. It had ordered the state to use the boundaries established after the last decennial survey for the upcoming election.

Stinging Dissent

Through a sharply worded objection, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the majority's decision. She argued that it disregarded the work of the lower court, observing that its decision was actually authored by a judge nominated by former President Donald Trump.

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, Kagan wrote 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 control next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas voters, without justification, will be placed in electoral districts based on their race. And that result, as this court has declared repeatedly, is a infraction of the law of the land.

National Redistricting Fight

This decision occurs during a nationwide fight over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is a crucial component in campaigns to transform the U.S. House map to bolster a slim Republican hold. Ordinarily, map-drawing occurs after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a brazen off-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a wave among other states.

Republicans in including North Carolina and Missouri have also passed new maps that might create a number of more conservative seats. The opposition, for their part, have responded with their own plans in states like California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.

Partisan Responses

The Texas AG hailed the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order upheld Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that ensures representation favorable to the GOP. Our state is leading the charge to reclaim the nation, one district and one state at a time, he added.

Conversely, opposition party officials decried the outcome. The Court's approval of this extreme, racially gerrymandered Texas GOP map is profoundly disappointing, said the head of a major Democratic election organization.

A leading House leader stated the court had another time damaged its legitimacy by approving a racially gerrymandered 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 added.