Texas May Get 5 New GOP Seats Thanks To Supreme Courtroom

[ad_1] by Sharelle B. McNair December 5, 2025

Liberal Supreme Courtroom Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the ruling, saying the choice "ensures that many Texas residents, for no good purpose, shall be positioned in electoral districts due to their race."

Christmas got here early for President Donald Trump as a current Supreme Courtroom ruling permits Texas to make use of a brand new congressional gerrymandered map that would give Republicans the trail to win 5 extra U.S. Home seats in the course of the 2026 midterm election, NPR reviews.

The excessive courtroom’s Dec. 4 ruling heightens Republicans’ possibilities of holding their slim majority within the Home of Representatives after Trump pressured his celebration members to redraw congressional districts in an effort to present the GOP a leg up. The ruling can also be a flip of occasions after a three-judge panel’s ruling as soon as blocked the state’s lately redrawn map, which might probably eradicate present voting districts the place Black and Latino voters collectively make up the bulk.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Courtroom sided with Texas, which filed an emergency request for the justices to pause the block, arguing the panel “didn't honor the presumption of legislative good religion by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial proof towards the legislature.” As well as, the ruling projected the decrease courtroom “improperly inserted itself into an lively main marketing campaign, inflicting a lot confusion and upsetting the fragile federal-state steadiness in elections.”

Liberal Supreme Courtroom Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the ruling saying, the choice “ensures that many Texas residents, for no good purpose, shall be positioned in electoral districts due to their race.” “And that outcome, as this Courtroom has pronounced yr in and yr out, is a violation of the Structure,” the justices wrote in a dissenting opinion.

With Republicans holding 25 out of 38 congressional seats, Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton, a member of the GOP, celebrated the ruling and mentioned in a press release the GOP-drawn map “displays the political local weather of our state and is a large win for Texas and each conservative who's bored with watching the left attempt to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was more than pleased with the choice, issuing a press release saying: “We received! Texas is formally — and legally — extra purple,” in response to The Related Press.

However regulation consultants like election regulation professional Richard Hasen on the College of California at Los Angeles regulation faculty, really feel it’s a warning signal towards decrease courts, calling the vote “a inexperienced gentle for there to be much more re-redistricting, and a powerful message to decrease courts to butt out.”

The Supreme Courtroom’s resolution places the seats of a few of Texas’s Black Democratic leaders in danger. With 5 extra seats, the management of Reps. Mark Veasey, serving the thirty third District, and Al Inexperienced, serving the ninth District, could be moved. Veasey’s space would stay considerably blue-leaning, however the metro metropolis of Fort Price would drop off, opening a window for a main run-off between him and fellow Democrat, Rep. Julie Johnson.

For Inexperienced, who has served nearly all of Harris County since 2005, the map would shift issues to the jap a part of Houston, the place knowledge present might have been received over by Trump within the 2024 election by as little as 15 factors.

Democrats reminiscent of Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee, slammed the choice. DelBene mentioned the map isn’t in the very best curiosity of Texas residents and extra so “put in place on the behest of nationwide Republicans who're determined to cling to their majority within the Home of Representatives by decimating minority voting alternative.”

The redistricting battle is in full drive throughout the nation, with Democratic leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom coast to coast matching Republican power with redistricting maps that favor the blue aisle. Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina achieved victory with a three-judge panel greenlighting the Tar Heel state to make use of the map within the 2026 elections.