John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday reinstated redrawn Texas electoral maps aimed at bringing more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives and pushing President Donald Trump as he seeks his party to maintain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
The justices granted Texas officials’ request to undo a lower court ruling that blocked the state from using Trump-backed maps, which could give up to five U.S. House seats currently held by Democrats to Republicans. Lower courts concluded that the map may be racially discriminatory and violate U.S. Constitutional protections.
Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both houses of Congress. Giving control of the House or Senate to Democrats in the November 2026 elections would jeopardize Trump’s legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations into the president.
The Supreme Court ruling comes amid a nationwide battle in Republican- and Democratic-led states over redrawing electoral maps to change the demographic makeup of congressional districts to gain partisan advantage.
On Nov. 21, Justice Samuel Alito temporarily stayed the lower court ruling as the Supreme Court weighs how to proceed with the case.
The process of redrawing a state’s district boundaries is called redistricting. For decades, the Supreme Court has been engaged in legal battles over a practice called gerrymandering, in which district boundaries are redrawn to marginalize certain voters and increase the influence of others.
The Supreme Court declared in a 2019 ruling that gerrymandering for partisan reasons — to enhance one’s party’s electoral chances and weaken one’s political opponents — cannot be challenged in federal court. But gerrymandering driven primarily by race remains illegal under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law and the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting.
Many Texas Republican lawmakers said the new maps were designed in response to Trump’s demands to redraw electoral maps to gain a partisan advantage in House races. But an El Paso court ruled 2-1 on Nov. 18 that the map may constitute illegal racial gerrymandering, siding with civil rights groups that filed a lawsuit to block it.
Each of the 50 U.S. states is represented in Congress by two U.S. Senators, and there are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, based on population. California, the most populous state, has the most House members with 52, followed by Texas with 38. Republicans currently hold 25 of the 38 U.S. House seats in Texas.
“Racial considerations”
The Texas electoral map at the center of the controversy was passed by the Republican-led Texas Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in August.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, the author of the lower court ruling, wrote that what “ultimately prompted” Texas to redraw its maps was a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice urging state officials to “inject race into what Texas insists is a race-blind process.”
Brown, a Trump judicial appointee, wrote that the Justice Department’s analysis was based on a “legally incorrect assertion” that the racial makeup of four congressional districts in the state’s previous electoral map was unconstitutional and must be redrawn.
“If the Trump administration sends a letter to Texas urging the state to redraw its congressional maps to improve the performance of Republican candidates, plaintiff groups will face a greater burden to prove that race — not partisanship — is the driving force behind the 2025 maps,” Brown wrote.
“But there is nothing in the Justice Department letter that touches on partisan politics,” the judge wrote. “This letter orders Texas to change four precincts for one reason only: the racial demographics of the voters who live there.”
The NAACP civil rights group noted in a statement after the ruling that “Texas is only 40 percent white, but white voters control 73 percent of the state’s congressional seats.”
The court directed that the state’s previous electoral maps, approved by the Republican-led Legislature in 2021, should be used in the 2026 elections.
U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, broke with the court majority in his dissenting opinion.
“The major winners of Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and (California Gov.) Gavin Newsom,” Smith wrote. “The clear losers are the people of Texas and the rule of law.”
Soros, a billionaire financier and major Democratic donor, has long been viewed as a villain by Trump and his political base. Newsom is a prominent Democrat who has said he is considering a 2028 presidential run.
The lower court ruling marks the latest setback in Trump’s push to tilt the political map. Indiana Republicans on Nov. 14 abandoned a legislative session aimed at crafting the state’s new congressional map.
Democratic-run California has reacted to Texas redistricting by launching its own action targeting the state’s five Republican-controlled districts. In November, California voters overwhelmingly approved a new map that favored Democrats. The Trump administration has sued California in an attempt to prevent its new congressional map from taking effect.
Redistricting is typically done to reflect population changes as measured by the national census taken every 10 years, although this year’s redistricting was designed to ensure partisan advantage.
The Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, has heard arguments in another major case this term involving race and redistricting. In a case involving Louisiana’s U.S. House district map, conservative judges signaled their willingness to weaken another key part of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark federal law Congress enacted in 1965 to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
(Reporting by John Kruzel)