The US Supreme Court on Monday turned around a district court ruling that blocked Texas’ 2025 congressional electoral map as likely racially discriminatory, allowing Republican-elected districts to run in the 2026 midterm elections.
The unsigned one-paragraph order cited the court’s own 2025 decision Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens as controlling, without further explanation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the order.
A three-judge federal panel blocked the map in November 2025 after a nine-day hearing with 23 witnesses and a 160-page opinion, finding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on racial gerrymandering claims under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act. The district court found that the drawings in six of the state’s congressional districts were based predominantly on race.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the map in August 2025 at the request of President Donald Trump, targeting five House seats then held by Democrats, all in districts with significant minority populations. Texas Democrats left the state in an unsuccessful attempt to break the quorum and block the redistricting vote. The Supreme Court had temporarily restored the map in December 2025, ruling that Texas was likely to show that the district court failed to apply the legislature’s good faith presumption and erred by refusing to draw an adverse inference when plaintiffs failed to provide a comparable alternative map.
Damon Hewitt, President and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said The ruling “added grave insult to an already damaging injury” and argued that the Trump administration had “directed Texas to throw a wrecking ball on majority-minority congressional districts.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called The decision is a victory for the state ahead of the 2026 elections.
The map will now govern congressional elections in Texas through at least the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling resolves the immediate dispute for this cycle, although the underlying legal battle over Texas’ congressional boundaries may continue.
