April 28 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared Texas to use its rare mid-decade congressional map, handing a victory to the Trump administration and Republicans in their expanding redistricting fight ahead of the midterm elections.
Texas was the first state to redraw its congressional map under pressure from President Donald Trump, as Republicans seek to hold on to their narrow majority in the House of Representatives, prompting a gerrymandering arms race as both parties redraw maps in states they control.
Four Republican-led states, including Texas, have redrawn their maps through legislation, while two Democratic-led states have done so through voter-approved ballot measures.
Most are being challenged in court, and Texas’ map appears to be the first to receive final Supreme Court approval for use in the midterm election.
The new map is expected to produce additional GOP seats in the House of Representatives. Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 seats in the lower chamber.
“Texas’ congressional map is lawful, constitutional and reflects the will of our citizens and I will continue to aggressively defend its use ahead of the 2026 midterm elections,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Monday in response to the ruling.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit challenging the mid-decade Texas map as unconstitutionally diluting the voting power of Latinos by the League of United Latin American Citizens.
The map was blocked by a three-judge federal panel in November, with U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruling in favor of LULAC, stating “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
Texas appealed the ruling to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, which in December, approved the map’s use in a 6-3 decision, along ideological lines, finding that the district court had erred by not presuming the legislature acted in good faith when it passed the map and by not treating the challengers’ failure to produce an alternative, partisan map as significant.
No new reasoning was given on Monday by the high court, whose ruling, a summary disposition, pointed to its December order as effectively resolving the case.
“HUGE WIN at the Supreme Court validating the new Texas Congressional Map,” Texas’ Republican governor and Trump ally, Greg Abbott, said in a statement late Monday.
“We added more Republican seats than any state.”
The Texas map redraw was initially expected to give Republicans five additional seats in the House. However, the Washington-based Brookings Institution estimates that it most likely will add only two seats amid the GOP’s dropping popularity among Latino voters, and could result in Republicans losing seats, according to the think tank.
The redistricting effort comes as Trump has warned Republicans that losing the House in November could lead to his impeachment.
The Texas Democratic Party in a statement Monday described the GOP effort to create additional red seats as never about the State of Texas but was “always about protecting Donald Trump and the Republican Party from accountability.”
“This wasn’t normal redistricting, it was a mid-decade attempt to change the rules, rig the system and let Republicans handpick their voters instead of allowing voters to choose their own representatives,” Kendall Scudder, the Texas Democratic Party chair, said in a statement.
“If the system is stacked, the answer is clear: organize, turn out and win anyway.”