In a major win for Republicans and President Trump, the Supreme Court restored Texas’ newly redrawn congressional map Thursday, allowing the state’s controversial redistricting plan to be implemented ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
The conservative justices on the high court granted the stay of a lower court order blocking the Trump-backed map in response to an emergency request from Texas.
The Texas congressional map enacted over the summer could give Republicans five additional House seats after the midterms.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Texas can hold elections next year under the state’s newly drawn congressional district map. AP“Based on our preliminary evaluation of this case, Texas satisfies the traditional criteria for interim relief,” the majority ruled, finding that the Lone Star State was likely to succeed in its appeal that the District Court committed “serious errors” when it blocked the new map over concerns race was used to determine the new districts.
The majority slammed the lower court for having “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
The justices acted on an emergency request because qualifying in the new districts had already begun with primary elections slated to take place in March.
In her dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan was miffed that her colleagues dismissed the lower court’s “quite careful” determination that the new pro-GOP Texas congressional map “largely divided its citizens along racial lines,” in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
“The court issued a 160-page opinion recounting in detail its factual findings. Yet this Court reverses that judgment based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend, of a cold paper record,” Kagan wrote.
“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,” she continued, arguing that restoring the map “disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge.”
Kagan raged at the majority’s “eagerness to playact a district court.”
“This Court’s stay guarantees that Texas’s new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year’s elections for the House of Representatives,” she continued. “And this Court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race.
“And that result, as this Court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the Constitution.”
The effort to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year’s elections touched off a nationwide redistricting battle.
Texas was the first state to heed Trump’s calls for redistricting. Missouri and North Carolina soon followed suit with new GOP-friendly maps.
In response, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom moved to redraw districts in his own state to counter the likely GOP gains in Texas.
California voters approved the Newsom-led ballot initiative last month to give Democrats an advantage in five House seats.
The Trump administration has sued to block the new map in California.
Missouri’s redistricting effort is also facing a court challenge.
A three-judge panel, however, allowed the new North Carolina map to be used in next year’s election.
With Post wires.
