The Trump administration and Republicans have won their growing battle over redistricting ahead of the 2018 elections as the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to use its unique mid-decade congressional map.
Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Texas was the first state to redesign its congressional map. Republicans are attempting to maintain their slim majority in the House of Representatives, which has led to a gerrymandering arms race in which both parties rewrite maps in states they control.
Two Democratic-led states have changed their boundaries through ballot measures approved by voters, while four Republican-led states, including Texas, have done so through law.
Texas’ map seems to be the first to get final Supreme Court permission for use in the midterm election, while the majority are being contested in court.
It is anticipated that the revised map will result in more GOP seats in the House of Representatives. Currently, Republicans control 25 of Texas’s 38 lower house seats.
“Texas’ congressional map is lawful, constitutional and reflects the will of our citizens and I will continue to aggressively defend its use ahead of the 2026 midterm elections,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded to the decision in a statement released on Monday.
The decision was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens alleging that the mid-decade Texas map unconstitutionally reduced the voting power of Latinos.
In November, a three-judge federal panel halted the plan. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled in favour of LULAC, declaring that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
Texas appealed the decision to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, which in December upheld the map’s use in a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines. The court concluded that the district court erred by failing to assume the legislature acted in good faith when it passed the map and by failing to consider the challengers’ failure to produce an alternative, partisan map as significant.
