🔗 Share this article Supreme Court Approves Redrawn Texas House Electoral Boundaries. Through a unattributed ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas to implement a newly configured congressional map that could add up to five new Republican-leaning districts. The 6-3 ruling, issued on Thursday, upholds a petition by the state to set aside a lower court's ruling that had rejected the new map in November. Court's Reasoning The federal judge erroneously placed itself into an active primary campaign, generating significant confusion and disturbing the delicate equilibrium in elections, the justices wrote in detailing its decision. That lower court had previously found that Texas had likely grouped voters according to their race – a act known as racial gerrymandering – when it enacted the boundaries. It had mandated the state to employ the districts drawn after the 2020 census for the next year's election. Sharp Opposition In a sharply worded dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan criticized the court's decision. She argued that it disregarded the work of the district court, pointing out that its decision was actually authored by a judge appointed by ex-President Donald Trump. We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision, Kagan argued in a opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She continued, This court's stay guarantees that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its increased favoritism, will govern next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas voters, without justification, will be sorted in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced consistently, is a breach of the law of the land. Countrywide Map-Drawing Battle The ruling comes amid a countrywide contest over the redistricting of electoral maps. Texas is an essential part in pushes to transform the U.S. House map to protect a slim Republican control. Ordinarily, map-drawing happens after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to initiate a bold off-cycle redistricting earlier in the summer triggered a chain reaction among other states. GOP lawmakers in including North Carolina and Missouri have also passed redistricting plans that are estimated to yield a number of more Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, for their part, have pushed back with their own plans in including California and Virginia, which could offset those projected gains. Partisan Responses The Texas top lawyer praised the High Court's decision. In a statement, he said the order defended Texas's fundamental right to draw a map that secures representation favorable to his party. We are setting the precedent for restoring our country, through each electoral district and individual state, he added. On the other hand, opposition party representatives decried the decision. The Court's approval of this extreme, racially gerrymandered Texas GOP map is profoundly disappointing, said the chair of a major Democratic campaign committee. Another senior Democratic figure argued the court had another time shredded its standing by rubber-stamping a racially gerrymandered 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 added.