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Via an per curiam decision, the U.S. Supreme Court permitted Texas to use a revised congressional map that could add up to five additional GOP-friendly districts. The six-to-three ruling, released on Thursday, upholds a petition by the state to set aside a district court's ruling that had rejected the redistricting plan in November.

Court's Rationale

The lower court erroneously placed itself into an ongoing primary campaign, generating significant confusion and disrupting the fine balance of power in elections, the justices wrote in justifying its decision.

The district court had earlier ruled that Texas had likely classified voters based on their race – a practice known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the new maps. It had ordered the state to use the districts drawn after the last decennial survey for the forthcoming election.

Stinging Dissent

With a forcefully written dissent, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the majority's decision. She contended that it disrespected the work of the lower court, noting that its ruling was written by a judge appointed by ex-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 co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan added, This court's stay solidifies that Texas's new map, with all its enhanced favoritism, will dictate next year's elections. And it ensures that many Texas voters, unjustly, will be grouped in electoral districts based on their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced consistently, is a infraction of the U.S. Constitution.

Countrywide Map-Drawing Struggle

The ruling is part of a nationwide battle over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in campaigns to reshape the U.S. House map to protect a narrow Republican majority. Usually, map-drawing takes place after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a chain reaction among other states.

Republicans in including North Carolina and Missouri have also approved new maps that are estimated to yield a number of additional conservative seats. Democrats, for their part, have responded with their own plans in including California and Virginia, which might neutralize those projected gains.

Political Reactions

The Texas AG hailed the High Court's decision. In a release, he said the order protected Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that secures representation supportive of the GOP. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he added.

In contrast, opposition party officials criticized the ruling. The Court's approval of this extreme, racially gerrymandered Texas GOP map is profoundly disappointing, said the leader of a major Democratic election organization.

Another top Democratic leader said the court had another time shredded its credibility by upholding a discriminatory 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 concluded.