Supreme Court Restores Texas’ New Congressional Map

The Supreme Court has temporarily halted a lower court’s order barring Texas from using its new congressional map for the 2026 elections after the state filed an emergency petition to the high court Friday evening.

Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees the judicial circuit in which the case originated, granted an administrative stay of a lower court’s ruling ordering that the state use the congressional map passed in 2021 for the 2026 elections. Alito’s order means that the new Texas congressional map has been temporarily restored for the 2026 election while the full Supreme Court considers the emergency petition.

A three-judge panel had ruled in a 2-1 decision that the map passed earlier this year was an unlawful racial gerrymander. The state claims the maps were drawn as a partisan gerrymander, which is lawful, rather than a racial gerrymander, as the new map was slated to give Republicans five additional seats in the House of Representatives.

Texas’s emergency petition to the high court late Friday asked for a full ruling on the emergency petition by Dec. 1, noting that the lower court’s ruling came in the middle of the candidate filing period for the 2026 elections. The candidate filing period in Texas is scheduled to end on Dec. 8.

“The district court entered its sweeping injunction far too late in the day—ten days after Texas’s candidate filing period had already opened,” the petition said. “The injunction changes the boundaries of all but one of the State’s 38 congressional districts, enjoining Texas from using its duly enacted 2025 map and resurrecting the repealed 2021 map.”

“The chaos caused by such an injunction is obvious: campaigning had already begun, candidates had already gathered signatures and filed applications to appear on the ballot under the 2025 map, and early voting for the March 3, 2026, primary was only 91 days away,” it continued. “The lateness of the district court’s injunction (issued 38 days after the hearing) alone warrants a stay.”

Alito requested a response to the petition from the groups suing Texas over the congressional map by 5 p.m. on Monday.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defended the congressional maps in a statement shortly after filing the emergency petition to the Supreme Court, accusing “radical left-wing activists” of attempting to steal the House “for Democrats” through lawsuits challenging the maps.

“I am fighting to stop this blatant attempt to upend our political system,” Paxton said. “Texas engaged in partisan redistricting solely to secure more Republican seats in Congress and thereby better represent our state and Texans. For years, Democrats have aggressively gerrymandered their states and only cry foul and hurl baseless ‘racism’ accusations because they are losing.”

The majority ruling of the three-judge panel was accompanied by a fiery, lengthy dissent from U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, who took aim at the majority opinion and its author, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown.

Smith called the ruling “the most blatant exercise of judicial activism that I have ever witnessed” and said it was “replete with legal and factual error, and accompanied by naked procedural abuse,” which demanded reversal by the Supreme Court.

Texas’s decision to draw the new congressional map, which would likely net Republicans five seats in the House, sparked a race for mid-decade redistricting. Earlier this month, California voters passed a ballot measure to give the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature the ability to redraw the congressional map, likely netting Democrats five seats.

If the order halting Texas’s new map is reinstated, the GOP would be at a net loss in this cycle’s redistricting battle, especially as Indiana lawmakers punt on trying to draw the GOP up to two new seats and Virginia Democrats, emboldened by this month’s elections, set their sights on drawing more Democratic seats.