Through a unattributed decision, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas to implement a newly configured congressional map that could add several five new conservative-tilting districts. The 6-3 ruling, issued on Thursday, grants a petition by the state to lift a district court's injunction that had struck down the new map in November.
Court's Reasoning
The district court erroneously placed itself into an active primary campaign, generating significant confusion and upsetting the sensitive federal-state balance in elections, the supreme court said in justifying its ruling.
That lower court had determined that Texas had probably grouped voters by their race – a practice known as unconstitutional racial sorting – when it enacted the new maps. It had ordered the state to revert to the districts established after the most recent national count for the next year's election.
Sharp Opposition
With a forcefully written objection, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the majority's decision. She contended that it disrespected the work of the lower court, noting that its opinion was actually authored by a judge appointed 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 argued in a opinion co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She continued, Today's ruling guarantees that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its boosted favoritism, will control next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas citizens, unjustly, will be placed in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has declared year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution.
Countrywide Redistricting Fight
The ruling occurs during a nationwide fight over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in campaigns to transform the U.S. House map to secure a slim Republican majority. Typically, boundary revision occurs after a ten-year survey. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to proceed with a bold mid-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a chain reaction among other states.
Conservative legislators in including North Carolina and Missouri have also passed redistricting plans that might create a number of additional conservative seats. Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, have responded with new maps in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.
Partisan Responses
Lone Star State AG praised the supreme court ruling. In a release, he said the order protected Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that ensures representation aligned with the GOP. Our state is leading the charge to reclaim the nation, one district and one state at a time, he added.
In contrast, opposition party leaders decried the outcome. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the chair of a major party campaign committee.
A leading House leader said the court had yet again damaged its legitimacy by upholding a racially gerrymandered map. Tonight's ruling by far-right justices on the supreme court is further proof that the extremists will do anything to rig the midterm elections. The gerrymandered Texas congressional map is a partisan and racially discriminatory power grab designed to subvert the will of the voters – particularly in Black and Latino communities, he concluded.
