On Friday, November 21, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the heart of a fierce political and legal battle, temporarily blocking a lower court ruling that had found Texas’ 2026 congressional redistricting plan likely discriminates on the basis of race. The move, signed by Justice Samuel Alito, puts on hold—for at least the next few days—the lower court’s decision and leaves the fate of Texas’ new, Republican-favored map hanging in the balance as the 2026 midterm elections loom ever closer.
The story behind this high-stakes intervention is as complex as American politics itself. According to the Associated Press, Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer of 2025, acting on a call from former President Donald Trump to shore up the GOP’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The new map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, a move that immediately sparked legal challenges from civil rights groups representing Black and Hispanic voters.
Those groups argued that the new map amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering—a charge that found support in a 2-1 ruling by a panel of federal judges in El Paso on November 18, 2025. The majority, led by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, wrote that while “politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map,” there was “substantial evidence” that Texas had racially gerrymandered the districts. Judge Brown cited a July letter from the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, which warned Texas that four of its districts were unconstitutional “coalition districts” (where no single racial group is in the majority), and noted that Governor Greg Abbott had explicitly directed the legislature to address those concerns. “Far from seeking to ‘rectify . . . racial gerrymandering,’” Brown wrote, the letter “urges Texas to inject racial considerations into what Texas insists was a race-blind process.”
The court’s ruling barred Texas from using the 2025 map for the 2026 elections and ordered the state to revert to its 2021 map, drawn on the basis of the 2020 census. Judge Brown also dismissed Texas’ argument that blocking the new map would cause chaos so close to the elections, stating that “we are still one year out from the general election and four months out from the primary election.”
But Texas officials saw things very differently. Texas Solicitor General William Peterson urged the Supreme Court to pause the lower court’s ruling, warning that the injunction “poses a very real risk of preventing candidates from being placed on the ballot and may well call into question the integrity of the upcoming election.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton didn’t mince words, calling civil rights group lawsuits “blatant attempts to upend our political system.” In a post on social media, Paxton declared, “Radical left-wing activists are abusing the judicial system to derail the Republican agenda and steal the US House for Democrats. I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system.”
In its emergency filing, the state argued that the redistricting process was driven by partisanship, not racial motives, and cited statements from elected Democrats who criticized the new maps as politically motivated. Texas insisted that its chief mapmaker relied on partisan data, not racial data, and that the lower court ruling “erroneously rests on speculation and inferences of bad faith.” The state also warned that the ruling could cause “chaos,” given that it came during the candidate filing period for the 2026 primary elections, which has a deadline of December 8, 2025.
The legal wrangling in Texas is just one front in a nationwide redistricting battle. The Texas Tribune reported that Missouri and North Carolina have followed Texas’ lead, each adopting new maps that add one Republican seat apiece. In response, California voters passed a ballot initiative to give Democrats five additional seats, a move that has also landed in the courts. Redrawn maps in California, Missouri, and North Carolina are all facing legal challenges, underscoring the high stakes and deep divisions over how political power is distributed in America’s democracy.
At the heart of the Texas dispute is the question of whether the state’s redistricting was an exercise in partisan maneuvering or an unlawful act of racial discrimination. The Supreme Court has grappled with this issue for decades. In 2019, the court ruled that partisan gerrymandering—redrawing districts to benefit one party—could not be challenged in federal courts. However, gerrymandering based primarily on race remains unlawful under the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court is also considering a case from Louisiana that could further limit the use of race in drawing electoral districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, potentially reshaping the legal landscape for years to come.
The lower court’s decision in Texas was not unanimous. Judge Jerry Smith, in a sharply worded 104-page dissent, lambasted the majority’s opinion and Judge Brown personally, calling Brown’s conduct “the most outrageous … by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved.” Smith argued that the “obvious reason” for the redistricting “of course, is partisan gain,” and accused the majority of “judicial activism.”
As the Supreme Court weighs its next steps, the immediate future of Texas’ congressional map remains uncertain. For now, the state is temporarily using its 2025 map, but the “legality of the map” will play out in court over the coming weeks and months, according to The Texas Tribune. The outcome could have significant consequences not just for Texas, but for the balance of power in Congress and the strategies of both parties heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans currently hold a narrow majority in the House—219 to 214, with two vacancies—and any shift in the distribution of seats could tip the scales. As the Brookings Institution noted, in 20 of the past 22 midterm elections, the president’s party has lost seats in the House, making redistricting battles all the more critical for both parties’ fortunes.
While Texas insists its redistricting was about politics, not race, civil rights groups and the federal judiciary have found the evidence less than convincing. As the Supreme Court prepares to make its next move, the eyes of the nation—and the future of its political representation—remain fixed on the Lone Star State.
