Supreme Court Delivers Huge Win for Texas Republicans on Redistricting

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Texas a major victory on Thursday, clearing the way for the state to use its new congressional map in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections.

In an unsigned order, the Court struck down a lower court’s attempt to block the map, which had been redrawn by the GOP-led legislature. The justices ruled that the District Court erred in granting an injunction to the League of Latin American Voters, which had claimed the map was racially motivated.

“The District Court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature,” the majority wrote.

A concurring opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, argued that the map was clearly drawn for political—not racial—reasons. That distinction matters under the law, and Alito pointed out that partisan gerrymandering, while controversial, is not automatically illegal.

“It is indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map … was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Alito wrote, comparing Texas’ approach to California’s own partisan redistricting moves.

Alito added that the plaintiffs failed to present a politically equivalent alternative map—something that, if possible, would have weakened Texas’ argument that it was based on political lines rather than racial ones.

“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,” the opinion read. “Although respondents’ experts could have easily produced such a map if that were possible, they did not.”

Meanwhile, the Court’s liberal justices—Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson—dissented.

In a fiery response, Justice Kagan complained that the majority had brushed aside the District Court’s findings, which claimed the map was racially discriminatory. She argued that the Supreme Court had effectively sanctioned racial gerrymandering under the guise of political redistricting.

The ruling is a major blow to Democrat-aligned activist groups, who had hoped to use the courts to upend Republican-drawn maps in red states ahead of the 2026 cycle. With the injunction lifted, Texas is now clear to move forward with its district lines—setting the stage for what could be another tough year for Democrats in the Lone Star State.