Republicans currently have a tiny majority over Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. Supreme Court ordered late on Dec. 4 that a redrawn election map expected to increase Republican representation in Texas’s U.S. House delegation remain in place.
The court’s new unsigned order in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Abbott was issued over the dissents of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Samuel Alito filed an opinion concurring in the order. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined the concurrence.
On Nov. 21, the Supreme Court took action hours after Texas appealed a federal district court ruling striking down the election map passed earlier this year. Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the state is allowed to file an appeal directly with the Supreme Court, bypassing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Alito, who oversees urgent appeals from Texas, issued an administrative stay on that date, halting the lower court ruling. An administrative stay temporarily preserves the status quo while giving justices more time to consider a case.
Republicans currently enjoy a razor-thin majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives, and Texas Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s U.S. House seats. Democrats hold 12 seats. Congressional elections are scheduled for Nov. 3, 2026.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas held 2–1 on Nov. 18 that the state may not use the new map because “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
In the federal district court’s majority opinion, Judge Jeffrey V. Brown said that “the Plaintiff Groups are likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
Gerrymandering refers to the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to benefit a particular party or constituency. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that race-based gerrymandering violates the U.S. Constitution but that redrawing district boundaries to boost partisan fortunes passes constitutional muster.
U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, who sat on the panel, filed a strongly worded dissenting opinion, describing the ruling as the “most blatant exercise of judicial activism” he has ever witnessed.
