The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for Texas to use a newly drawn congressional map in next year’s midterm elections, pausing a lower court ruling that had invalidated the plan as unlawful. The map was drawn to increase Republican representation and could add as many as five GOP-held U.S. House seats.
A conservative majority granted an emergency application from Gov. Greg Abbott, effectively keeping the map in place while the high court considers the case. The three-judge federal panel that struck down the map had concluded lawmakers, acting with input from the Trump administration, explicitly considered race when reassigning voters and therefore produced a racial gerrymander.
The unsigned Supreme Court order said Texas was “likely to succeed on the merits,” criticizing the lower court for not giving state legislators the presumption of good faith and for intervening so close to an election nearly a year away. The decision appeared to be 6-3, with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting.
Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent, said the ruling ignored the thorough work of the district court and harmed Texans the judges found were reassigned to new districts based on race. The lower court had determined that, while political objectives were evident, race also played a role in how certain minority voters were moved among districts.
In a separate opinion, Justice Samuel Alito faulted the challengers for not showing that race, not politics, was the decisive motive. He noted they did not offer an alternative map demonstrating that the state could have secured its partisan goals without resorting to race, a gap Alito said undercut their case and supported the inference the map was primarily partisan.
Civil rights groups challenging the map, including the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Texas NAACP and Democratic Reps. Al Green and Jasmine Crockett, warned the decision could incentivize last-minute mapmaking that prevents effective court review. MALDEF president Thomas Saenz said the ruling risks encouraging states to draw maps late in the cycle to shield them from judicial intervention; an earlier version of this article misstated his remarks as a direct quotation.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton hailed the Supreme Court action as a major victory for the state and conservatives. The Justice Department under the Trump administration filed a brief urging the court to side with Texas, and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi argued federal courts should not block state partisan redistricting. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned the ruling, saying the court had damaged its credibility by approving what he called a racially gerrymandered plan. Democrats have already begun drawing an alternate congressional map in California to try to offset potential GOP gains; that litigation could also reach the high court.
The high court had temporarily stayed the lower court’s order on Nov. 21 in an action signed by Justice Alito. Redistricting normally follows the decennial census, but this cycle saw former President Trump urging Republican-led states to redraw maps outside the usual timetable. Earlier in the year, the Trump administration warned Texas it might face federal litigation if it retained so-called “coalition districts” where nonwhite voters of different races combine to form a majority.
A 2019 Supreme Court decision allows states to pursue redistricting that advantages the majority party, but federal constitutional protections and the Voting Rights Act continue to limit the use of race in drawing district lines. The three-judge panel that invalidated the Texas plan did so by a 2-1 vote, with Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, writing that substantial evidence indicated a racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Texas’ lawyers told the Supreme Court that it was too late in the election cycle for federal courts to change maps and denied that race was the motivating factor, while openly conceding the legislature redrew lines for partisan advantage. The lawsuit was filed by six groups and lawmakers who argued the governor’s rationale — removing coalition districts — demonstrated that race, not only politics, drove the redistricting.
CORRECTION (Dec. 4, 2025): An earlier version of this article mischaracterized Thomas Saenz’s comments as a direct quotation; the wording attributed to him was a paraphrase.
Lawrence Hurley is a senior Supreme Court reporter for NBC News.