Supreme Court upholds new Texas electoral map: allows up to five Republican seats to be added

The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will allow the state of Texas to use a congressional map that adds up to five additional Republican seats for the 2026 congressional elections, greatly increasing the GOP's chances of maintaining control of the House of Representatives. The decision by a majority of the high court's justicesoverturns a lower court decision in November that had blocked the election linesand ordered Texas to use existing ones.

While the court ruled that the new map represented unconstitutional racial gerrymandering, the Supreme Court said Thursday that such a decision appeared to be incorrect. "The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections," noted the unsigned order of the Supreme Court, whose final decision was a 6-3 vote, with the liberal justices opposed to endorsing the new electoral map.

Criticism and celebration

Justice Elena Kagan, who opposed the Supreme Court allowing the state of Texas to make use of the new congressional map, manifested in her dissent that the decision seemed to her "disrespectful to the work of a district court that did all that could be asked of it"and furthermore "prejudicial to the millions of Texans who, the district court found, were assigned their new districts based on their race."

For his part, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who in recent weeks has been one of the biggest supporters of the new map, celebrated the decision made by the Supreme Court by considering it a real victory not only for his state, but also for conservatives. "This 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," Paxton explained in a statement.