The Supreme Court signaled that Texas is likely to prevail in defending its new congressional map, faulting a lower court for misreading evidence and ignoring required legal inferences as the state races toward 2026 election deadlines.
In a brief order that keeps Gov. Greg Abbott’s redrawn districts in place for now, the court said the district court committed two major errors by failing to apply the presumption of legislative good faith when considering disputed evidence and by declining to draw a near-dispositive inference against challengers who offered no alternative map that met Texas’s partisan goals.
The stay is temporary while the merits proceed, yet Justice Elena Kagan warned in dissent that the ruling effectively locks in the contested boundaries for the 2026 midterms because of looming state deadlines.
"This Court’s eagerness to playact a district court here has serious consequences," Kagan said. "The majority calls its ‘evaluation’ of this case ‘preliminary.’ The results, though, will be anything but.
DOJ BACKS TEXAS IN SUPREME COURT FIGHT OVER REPUBLICAN-DRAWN MAP
"This Court’s stay guarantees that Texas’s new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year’s elections for the House of Representatives. And this Court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race," Kagan continued. "And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution."
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin condemned the ruling as a moral and legal failure that rewards partisan manipulation while undermining voters across Texas.
"Today’s decision by the Supreme Court to allow Texas Republicans’ rigged, racially gerrymandered maps to go into effect is wrong — both morally and legally," Martin said.
"Once again, the Supreme Court gave Trump exactly what he wanted: a rigged map to help Republicans avoid accountability in the midterms for turning their backs on the American people. But it will backfire.
"Texas Democrats fought every step of the way against these unlawful, rigged congressional maps and sparked a national movement. Democrats are fighting back, responding in kind to even the playing field across the country. Republicans are about to be taught one valuable lesson: Don’t mess with Texas voters. The DNC stands committed to building power in Texas, no matter the maps in play, one election at a time."
Texas House Democratic Leader Rep. Gene Wu said the Supreme Court not only failed Texas voters but American democracy.
ABBOTT SIGNS TEXAS REDISTRICTING MAP INTO LAW, SECURING MAJOR GOP VICTORY AHEAD OF 2026 MIDTERMS
"This is what the end of the Voting Rights Act looks like: courts that won't protect minority communities even when the evidence is staring them in the face," Wu said. "I’m angry about this ruling. Every Texan who testified against these maps should be angry. Every community that fought for generations to build political power and watched Republicans try to gerrymander it away should be angry.
"But anger without action is just noise, and Democrats are taking action to fight back: California passed Prop 50 and added five Democratic seats to offset Texas. Democrats are organized and fighting back in Illinois, New York, Virginia, and more," he continued. "A nationwide movement is being built that says if Republicans want to play this game, Democrats will play it better."
Abbott, though, celebrated the decision, saying, "We won!"
"Texas is officially — and legally — more red," he said. "The U.S. Supreme Court restored the redistricting maps passed by Texas that were based on constitutional principles and Supreme Court precedent. The new congressional districts better align our representation in Washington, D.C., with the values of our state. This is a victory for Texas voters, for common sense, and for the U.S. Constitution."
The ruling arrives amid a broader, unprecedented national redistricting battle driven by President Donald Trump’s effort to fortify the GOP House majority heading into 2026, a campaign that began in Texas before rapidly spreading to other states.
Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections, Trump in June first floated the idea of rare but not unheard of mid-decade congressional redistricting.
The mission was simple: Redraw congressional district maps in red states to pad the GOP's razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats.
Texas was Trump's first target.
A month later, when asked by reporters about his plan to add Republican-leaning House seats across the country, the president said, "Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five."
Abbott called a special session of the GOP-dominated state legislature to pass the new map. Democratic state lawmakers broke quorum for two weeks and fled Texas in a bid to delay the passage of the redistricting bill.
The legislature eventually passed the bill, and Abbott signed it into law in late August.
REAGAN-APPOINTED JUDGE TORCHES COLLEAGUES IN TEXAS MAP FIGHT
But the new map immediately faced legal challenges, and the plight of the Texas lawmakers who fled the state energized Democrats across the country.
Among those jumping into the fight against Trump's redistricting was Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
California voters a month ago overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that will temporarily sidetrack the left-leaning state's nonpartisan redistricting commission and return the power to draw the congressional maps to the Democratic-dominated legislature.
That is expected to result in five more Democratic-leaning congressional districts in California, which aimed to counter the move by Texas to redraw its maps.
But the fight has spread beyond Texas and California.
Right-tilting Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have drawn new maps as part of the president's push. The legislature in red-leaning Indiana meets this week to try and pass redistricting, while Florida and Kansas are also mulling redrawing their maps.
"We must keep the Majority at all costs," Trump wrote on social media last month.
Illinois and Maryland, two blue states, and Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature, are also taking steps or seriously considering redistricting.
And in a blow to Republicans, a Utah district judge last month rejected a congressional district map drawn up by the state's GOP-dominated legislature and instead approved an alternate that will create a Democratic-leaning district ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
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