Supreme Court Clears GOP Gerrymandered Maps In Texas, Putting Black Democratic Reps At Risk

Liberal Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the ruling, saying the decision "ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race."

Christmas came early for President Donald Trump as a recent Supreme Court ruling permits Texas to use a new congressional gerrymandered map that could give Republicans the path to win five additional U.S. House seats during the 2026 midterm election, NPR reports.

The high court’s Dec. 4 ruling heightens Republicans’ chances of keeping their slim majority in the House of Representatives after Trump pressured his party members to redraw congressional districts in an effort to give the GOP a leg up. The ruling is also a turn of events after a three-judge panel’s ruling once blocked the state’s recently redrawn map, which would potentially eliminate existing voting districts where Black and Latino voters together make up the majority.

However, the Supreme Court sided with Texas, which filed an emergency request for the justices to pause the block, arguing the panel “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.” In addition, the ruling projected the lower court “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Liberal Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the ruling saying, the decision “ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race.” “And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution,” the justices wrote in a dissenting opinion.

With Republicans holding 25 out of 38 congressional seats, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a member of the GOP, celebrated the ruling and said in a statement the GOP-drawn map “reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was more than happy with the decision, issuing a statement saying: “We won! Texas is officially — and legally — more red,” according to The Associated Press.

But law experts like election law expert Richard Hasen at the University of California at Los Angeles law school, feel it’s a warning sign against lower courts, calling the vote “a green light for there to be even more re-redistricting, and a strong message to lower courts to butt out.”

The Supreme Court’s decision puts the seats of some of Texas’s Black Democratic leaders at risk. With five additional seats, the leadership of Reps. Mark Veasey, serving the 33rd District, and Al Green, serving the 9th District, would be moved. Veasey’s area would remain somewhat blue-leaning, but the metro city of Fort Worth would drop off, opening a window for a primary run-off between him and fellow Democrat, Rep. Julie Johnson.

For Green, who has served the majority of Harris County since 2005, the map would shift things to the eastern part of Houston, where data show could have been won over by Trump in the 2024 election by as little as 15 points.

Democrats such as Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, slammed the decision. DelBene said the map isn’t in the best interest of Texas residents and more so “put in place at the behest of national Republicans who are desperate to cling to their majority in the House of Representatives by decimating minority voting opportunity.”

The redistricting battle is in full force across the country, with Democratic leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom coast to coast matching Republican energy with redistricting maps that favor the blue aisle. Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina achieved victory with a three-judge panel greenlighting the Tar Heel state to use the map in the 2026 elections.