HOUSTON - The day after a panel of federal judges blocked Texas’ newly redrawn congressional map, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the panel’s ruling.
The challenge was brought by Democratic and minority groups that argue the map is favorable to Republicans while unfavorable to minorities.
Two of three judges on the panel found that the map appeared to be an attempt at race-based gerrymandering, while the dissenter, Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, wrote that the majority’s ruling was “unfair to the Texas voters who are having a map implemented by their duly elected legislature overturned by a self-aggrandizing, results-oriented court.”
The majority found that Texas needed to use district boundaries drawn by legislators in 2021. The new map made five districts more favorable to Republican voting, and the judges said the map had been drawn at the urging of the Trump administration.
“The map ultimately passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor — the 2025 Map — achieved all but one of the racial objectives that DOJ demanded,” wrote U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Galveston-based judge who was appointed to the federal court by Trump.
“Reverting to the 2021 map is also more proper than giving the Legislature an opportunity to redraw the map before issuing an injunction, as the state defendants ask the court to do.”
In his dissenting opinion, Smith writes that “Brown’s analysis exposes either a naivete that is unbefitting of the judiciary or a willful blindness unbecoming of the judiciary.”
“In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved,” Smith wrote. “In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving me any reasonable opportunity to respond.”
The SCOTUS order, signed by Justice Samuel Alito, will remain in place until justices determine whether the new map can be used in the upcoming midterm elections.
Missouri and North Carolina also have passed maps that likely would add a Republican each. And California’s Proposition 50 countered Texas’ five GOP swing with five Democratic seats. Democrats also have filed legal challenges in North Carolina and Missouri.
Ohio, which was legally required to redraw its map this year, saw a deal that could turn two Democratic seats over to the GOP, but Democrats say both districts will be competitive for the 2026 election.
Indiana lawmakers have been asked to draw a new map that would give the GOP two more districts, but state Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray has refused to do so.
