Supreme Court Approves Revised Lone Star State Congressional Districts.
Via an unattributed ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas to employ a newly configured congressional map that may create as many as five additional GOP-friendly districts. The 6-3 decision, handed down on Thursday, upholds a petition by the state to overturn a district court's block that had rejected the new map in November.
Court's Rationale
The lower court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, generating much confusion and disrupting the delicate balance of power in elections, the justices wrote in explaining its decision.
That lower court had determined that Texas had likely classified voters by their race – a practice known as illegal race-based districting – when it passed the new maps. It had mandated the state to employ the maps created after the last decennial survey for the upcoming election.
Stinging Opposition
With a strongly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court's ruling. She contended that it disrespected the work of the lower court, noting that its ruling was written by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Our position is above the district court, but our capability is not greater for resolving such fact-driven issues, Kagan wrote in a opinion co-signed by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She continued, This court's stay guarantees that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its boosted partisan advantage, will dictate next year's elections. And it means that many Texas residents, unjustly, will be sorted in electoral districts due to their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a infraction of the law of the land.
National Redistricting Fight
The court's action is part of a nationwide contest over the redrawing of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in pushes to transform the U.S. House map to secure a fragile Republican control. Typically, redistricting happens after a ten-year survey. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to move ahead with a brazen mid-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer sparked a chain reaction among other states.
Republicans in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also enacted new maps that could add several additional Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, in response, have responded with their own plans in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those projected gains.
Partisan Reactions
The Texas AG welcomed the supreme court ruling. In a comment, he said the order protected Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that secures representation supportive of his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he stated.
On the other hand, Democratic leaders criticized the decision. It's incredibly disappointing that the Court has rubber stamped a map enacted by Texas Republicans which, simply put, is an extreme, racially gerrymandered map, said the chair of a major party campaign committee.
A top House figure argued the court had yet again damaged its credibility by approving a race-based map. Tonight's ruling by far-right justices on the supreme court is further proof that the extremists will do anything to rig the midterm elections. The gerrymandered Texas congressional map is a partisan and racially discriminatory power grab designed to subvert the will of the voters – particularly in Black and Latino communities, he stated.