Supreme Court lets Texas use new House map for 2026, potentially adding up to 5 GOP seats

📌 Key Facts

• The Supreme Court issued an unsigned order allowing Texas to use a new, Trump‑pushed congressional map that was enacted last summer and is engineered to give Republicans as many as five additional House seats.
• Justice Samuel Alito had earlier issued a temporary administrative stay reinstating the new map while the full Court considered Texas’s emergency request; the full Court’s unsigned order now leaves the map in place heading into the 2026 cycle.
• The Court acted on the emergency request in part because candidate qualifying has begun and Texas primaries are scheduled for March 2026, raising imminent state election deadlines.
• A three‑judge lower panel had held a nine‑day hearing in October and then ordered Texas to continue using its 2021 map; the panel’s majority—authored by Trump‑appointee Judge Jeffrey V. Brown (joined by Judge David Guaderrama)—found likely racial discrimination, citing a DOJ letter and public statements by GOP lawmakers and saying there was “substantial evidence” of racial gerrymandering.
• Judge Jerry Smith issued a harsh dissent from the lower‑court majority, accusing Judge Brown of “pernicious judicial misbehavior” and calling the opinion untrue; at the Supreme Court level Justice Elena Kagan dissented from the stay, warning the decision will effectively lock in the contested map for the 2026 midterms.
• The Supreme Court faulted the lower court for not applying a presumption of legislative good faith and for overlooking that challengers had not offered an alternative map meeting Texas’s partisan aims.
• Before the Supreme Court intervened the lower court had ordered use of the 2021 map; the high court’s action reverses that and allows the contested map to be used for upcoming elections unless the Court later rules otherwise.
• Context: the ruling is part of a broader, Trump‑driven mid‑decade redistricting effort (with the Trump administration simultaneously suing to block California’s new maps while supporting Texas’s), and the Court is separately considering a Louisiana Voting Rights Act case that could further limit race‑based districts.

📰 Sources (4)