Supreme Court allows Texas congressional map to stand for 2026 primary

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday granted Texas’ request to keep its newly redrawn congressional map in place for the 2026 primary elections, issuing a stay against a lower court ruling that had thrown out the map last month. The decision, split 6–3 along ideological lines, ensures that the state’s political boundaries—crafted by Republican lawmakers to strengthen their partisan advantage—will remain unchanged through at least the next election cycle.

The federal judicial panel based in El Paso had previously ruled that Texas lawmakers improperly used racial considerations when drawing the new lines, violating constitutional protections. The State of Texas, through the Office of the Attorney General, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, relying heavily on arguments raised in a dissent by Judge Jerry Smith, the lone dissenter on the lower court panel.

Before Thanksgiving, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary stay to prevent the lower court ruling from taking effect. Thursday’s action converts that temporary pause into a stay lasting through the full appeal process, which is unlikely to conclude before the 2026 elections.

In a concurring opinion, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch emphasized that the map’s origins were political rather than racial. “First, the dissent does not dispute—because it is indisputable—that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” they wrote.

The concurring justices argued that challengers failed to offer an alternative map demonstrating that Texas could have achieved the same partisan goals without considering race. “Thus, when the asserted reason for a map is political, it is critical for challengers to produce an alternative map that serves the State’s allegedly partisan aim just as well as the map the State adopted… Although respondents’ experts could have easily produced such a map if that were possible, they did not, giving rise to a strong inference that the State’s map was indeed based on partisanship, not race.”

They concluded that the lower court did not follow established precedent. “Neither the duration of the District Court’s hearing nor the length of its majority opinion provides an excuse for failing to apply the correct legal standards as set out clearly in our case law.”

The Court’s three liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—issued a sharp dissent. They underscored the extensive record developed by the trial court. “The District Court conducted a nine-day hearing, involving the testimony of nearly two dozen witnesses and the introduction of thousands of exhibits,” they wrote. “It sifted through the resulting factual record, spanning some 3,000 pages.”

Their dissent emphasized the lower court’s conclusion that Texas relied heavily on race in drawing the district lines. “After considering all the evidence, it held that the answer was clear. Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.”

The dissenting justices criticized the Supreme Court for disregarding that record. “Without so much as a word about that standard, this Court today announces that Texas may run next year’s elections with a map the District Court found to have violated all our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting.”

They added that the ruling undermines both the lower court and Texas voters: “Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask… And today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”

Thursday’s decision likely pushes any reconsideration of the map well beyond the 2026 primary and possibly past the general election. The map, designed to provide Republicans with as many as five additional U.S. House seats, will remain in force while the appeal continues—cementing the GOP’s strategic gains for at least another cycle.