Major win for Trump as majority rejects lower-court ruling that found maps had been racially gerrymandered
US supreme court approves redrawn Texas congressional maps
Major win for Trump as majority rejects lower-court ruling that found maps had been racially gerrymandered Sam Levine and Lauren Gambino Thu 4 Dec 2025 19.52 EST
Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court’s ruling that struck down the state’s new map in November. The supreme court’s three liberal justices dissented.
“The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the supreme court said in an order explaining its decision.
The lower district court had previously found that Texas had likely sorted voters based on their race – an unlawful practice called racial gerrymandering – when it adopted the new maps, and ordered the state to use the maps it had adopted after the 2020 census for next year’s election. Trump push for new congressional maps meets resistance – from both parties Read more
In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Elena Kagan objected to the decision by the supreme court’s majority, arguing that it disrespected the work of the lower court, whose ruling actually was authored by a judge appointed by Trump.
“We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision,” Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“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. And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution,” she continued.
The ruling comes amid a nationwide battle over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in Trump’s effort to transform the US House map to secure Republicans’ fragile House majority for the second half of his presidential term. Democrats need to flip only a handful of congressional seats to win the House gavel, and the opposition party has historically gained ground during the midterm elections, particularly if the president’s approval ratings are low, as Trump’s are.
Typically, redistricting happens after a new decade’s census results. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a brazen mid-cycle redistricting earlier this summer set off a chain reaction among other states.
Of course they did.