By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday revived a redrawn Texas electoral map designed to add more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives, bolstering President Donald Trump’s quest for his party to retain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
The justices granted a request by Texas officials to overturn a lower court ruling that had blocked the state from using the Trump-backed map, which could flip up to five US House seats currently held by Democrats to Republicans. The lower court concluded that the map was likely racially discriminatory in violation of US constitutional protections.
Republicans currently hold small majorities in both houses of Congress. Relinquishing control of the House or Senate to Democrats in the November 2026 elections would jeopardize Trump’s legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations targeting the president.
The Supreme Court’s decision comes amid a national battle unfolding in Republican-led and Democratic-led states involving redrawing electoral maps to change the population composition of congressional districts for partisan advantage.
Justice Samuel Alito on November 21 temporarily halted the lower court’s decision as the Supreme Court considered how to proceed with the case.
The redrawing of electoral district boundaries in a state is a process called redistricting. There have been legal battles in the Supreme Court for decades over a practice called gerrymandering – the redrawing of district boundaries in order to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others.
The Supreme Court in a 2019 ruling declared that gerrymandering for partisan reasons – to boost one’s own party’s electoral chances and weaken one’s political opponent – cannot be challenged in federal courts. But gerrymandering driven primarily by race remains illegal under the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendment’s prohibition of racial discrimination in voting.
Several Texas Republican lawmakers said the new map was drawn in response to Trump’s request to redraw electoral maps for a partisan advantage in House races. But the El Paso-based court ruled 2-1 on Nov. 18 that the map likely amounted to an illegal racial gerrymander, with civil rights groups suing to block it.
Each of the 50 US states is represented in Congress by two US senators, with representation in the 435-seat House based on population. California, the most populous state, has the most House members with 52, while Texas is second with 38. Republicans currently hold 25 of the 38 US House seats in Texas.
‘RACIAL CONSIDERATIONS’
The Texas electoral map at the center of the dispute was passed by the Republican-led Texas legislature and signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott in August.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who authored the lower court decision, wrote that “what ultimately prompted” Texas to redraw its map was a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice urging state officials to “inject racial considerations into what Texas insists was a race-blind process.”
Brown, a Trump judicial appointee, wrote that the Justice Department’s analysis was based on the “legally incorrect assertion” that the racial composition of four Texas congressional districts in the state’s previous electoral map was unconstitutional and that they must be redrawn.
“If the Trump administration had sent Texas a letter urging the state to redraw its congressional map to improve the performance of Republican candidates, the plaintiff groups would then face a much greater burden to show that race — rather than partisanship — was the driving force behind the 2025 map,” Brown wrote.
“But nothing in the DOJ (Department of Justice) letter is couched in terms of partisan politics,” the judge wrote. “The letter instead commands Texas to redraw four districts for one reason and one reason only: the racial demographics of the voters who live there.”
The civil rights group NAACP noted in a statement after the decision that “the state of Texas is only 40% white, but white voters control over 73% of the state’s congressional seats.”
The court ordered that the state’s previous electoral map, approved by the Republican-led legislature in 2021, be used in the 2026 elections.
US Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, broke with the court’s majority in a dissenting opinion.
“The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros and (California Governor) Gavin Newsom,” Smith wrote. “The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law.”
Soros, a billionaire financier and major Democratic donor, has long been viewed as a villain by Trump and his political base. Newsom is a prominent Democrat who has said he is considering a 2028 presidential run.
The lower court’s ruling marked the latest blow in Trump’s push to tilt the political map. Indiana Republicans on November 14 abandoned a legislative session that had been called to enact a new congressional map in that state.
Democratic-led California reacted to the Texas redistricting by launching its own effort targeting five Republican-held districts in the state. California voters in November overwhelmingly approved a new map benefiting Democrats. The Trump administration has asked California to try to stop its new congressional map from taking effect.
Redistricting usually occurs to reflect changes in the population as measured by the national census that takes place every ten years, although this year’s redistricting was motivated by securing a partisan advantage.
The Supreme Court, which has a conservative 6-3 majority, has already heard arguments in another major case involving race and redistricting during its current term. Conservative justices in a case involving a map of US House districts in Louisiana have shown their willingness to gut another key section of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal law enacted by Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
(Reporting by John Kruzel)