Supreme Court Lets Texas Use Its Redrawn House Map in the 2026 Elections

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use its Republican-drawn congressional map in the 2026 elections while the legal fight over it continues, according to The Associated Press and SCOTUSblog. The order keeps on hold a 2-1 lower-court ruling that had blocked the map, at least until the justices issue a final decision in the case.

Republicans drew the map at President Donald Trump’s urging to give the party as many as five additional House seats, the AP reported. SCOTUSblog’s timeline shows how quickly the dispute moved: after a Justice Department letter in July, Gov. Greg Abbott told lawmakers to draw a new map, the Legislature adopted it in August, and a three-judge federal panel blocked it on Nov. 18 and ordered the state back to its 2021 map. Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused that ruling on Nov. 21 while the full court considered Texas’s request.

In its five-paragraph order, the court said Texas “is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors,” and that the panel “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign,” SCOTUSblog reported. Texas had told the justices that qualifying in the new districts was already under way, with primaries in March, the AP said.

Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, wrote separately that “Texas needs certainty on which map will govern the 2026 midterm elections.” He argued that the map was driven by partisan advantage, which even the dissenters did not dispute, and that when a map’s stated reason is political, challengers must offer an alternative map showing it could have been drawn another way, which they did not do. Texas has argued that the map reflected political and partisan goals rather than racial ones, according to SCOTUSblog.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. She wrote that the order “disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask,” arguing the panel’s task was factual and the high court should have overturned its findings only if clearly wrong. She said the majority reversed after reviewing “a cold paper record” over a holiday weekend, SCOTUSblog reported.

The lower court’s majority opinion, by Judge Jeffrey Brown, ran 160 pages. It acknowledged that “politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map” but found “it was much more than just politics,” concluding that “Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” The challengers, led by the League of United Latin American Citizens, argued the map dilutes the power of Black and Latino voters. Judge Jerry Smith dissented in a 104-page opinion, and the AP reported he accused Brown of “pernicious judicial misbehavior.”

Texas argued that the Purcell principle, which discourages courts from changing election rules close to an election, barred a return to the 2021 map. Brown had written that the principle requires a fact-intensive look at disruption, and found little, since the primary was four months away; Kagan noted the general election is eleven months off, SCOTUSblog said.

The ruling arrives amid a national redistricting race. Missouri and North Carolina have adopted maps adding one Republican seat each, and California voters approved a ballot measure giving Democrats five more seats there, which the Trump administration is suing to block, the AP reported.