AUSTIN — Texas can use its newly-drawn congressional map in next year’s elections, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, reversing a lower court ruling and dealing a victory to President Donald Trump’s hopes of keeping control of Congress in the midterm elections.
In an unsigned opinion, the court disagreed with a three-judge panel that the map Republican lawmakers approved over the summer was racially discriminatory. The ruling by the Supreme Court – where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage – means Texas Republicans have a better chance at flipping five congressional seats.
The opinion stated that the El Paso ruling that briefly put the 2025 congressional map on hold was incorrect because it relied on circumstantial evidence that race was a factor in redrawing district lines.
Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said it was “indisputable” that the new congressional map was drawn for partisan purposes.
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Citing a retaliatory redistricting effort in California, Alito said “the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion arguing to uphold the lower court ruling that would have barred Texas from using the new map. She was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race,” Kagan wrote.
Trump asked Texas officials to redraw its congressional districts mid-decade – a rare but not unprecedented task – to give Republicans a better chance of maintaining control of Congress after next year’s elections.
GOP lawmakers did just that.
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Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that the lawsuit over the 2025 redistricting effort was “Democrats’ attempt to abuse the judicial system to steal the U.S. House.”
“The Big Beautiful Map will be in effect for 2026,” Paxton said. “Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state. This map reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”
Houston Democratic state Rep. Gene Wu, the head of the House Democratic Caucus and a central opposition figure to the redistricting effort, said the Supreme Court “failed American democracy.”
“This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won’t protect minority communities even when the evidence is staring them in the face,” Wu said in a statement.
The new map was designed for Texas Republicans to flip five seats currently held by Democrats. The decision by Texas lawmakers to redraw its districts caused an uproar among Democrats – both in state and across the country.
Democrat members of the Texas House fled the state en masse, using a strategy known as breaking quorum to prevent the chamber from passing a redistricting map. For weeks, dozens remained out of the state and called on states run by Democrats to consider retaliatory redistricting efforts to counter any GOP gains in Texas.
Their effort, in part, spurred California Gov. Gavin Newsom to push for a redrawing of his state’s congressional districts. In November, voters in the left-leaning state overwhelmingly approved a one-time redistricting that would cancel out Republican efforts in Texas.
Democrats eventually returned to Austin, where the new congressional districts were quickly approved. They radically changed the partisan makeup of three Democratic-leaning districts in Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and central Texas. Two other South Texas districts represented by Democrats were pushed to the right.
But on Nov. 18, a federal court in El Paso struck down Texas’ new map, creating a potential nightmare for the Trump administration, which will be greatly limited in what it can accomplish in Congress if Democrats retake the U.S. House.
Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in his 160-page opinion that there was “substantial evidence” that the state racially gerrymandered its new map. Judge David Guaderrama, appointed by former President Barack Obama, joined Brown in the majority opinion.
U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, opposed the ruling and filed a scathing dissent where he accused Brown of engaging in judicial activism.
Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton slammed Brown’s ruling and predicted it would be reversed by the nation’s high court.
Justice Samuel Alito granted a temporary stay on the lower court’s ruling on Nov. 21, allowing the 2025 map to stay in place while the court considered the appeal. With today’s ruling, that map will be used for the 2026 midterm election.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.