What happened
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use its new congressional map for the 2026 elections, granting state officials a stay of a three-judge district court order that had blocked the map in a racial-gerrymandering challenge.
The unsigned order said Texas had satisfied the traditional criteria for interim relief and was likely to show that the district court made at least two serious errors: failing to honor the presumption of legislative good faith and failing to draw a dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference from the challengers' lack of an alternative map. The stay keeps the district court's Nov. 18 order paused pending a timely appeal to the justices, and the order says it will remain in effect while the high court acts on that appeal if the required papers are filed.
The case arose after Texas adopted a new mid-decade congressional map that challengers said was driven predominantly by race. The district court agreed and enjoined the map for the 2026 elections, but the Supreme Court said the state had made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favored a stay.
Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, wrote separately that the map's impetus was "partisan advantage pure and simple" and that the challengers' failure to produce a comparable partisan map supported an inference that Texas acted on partisanship, not race. The order also relied on election-administration concerns, saying lower federal courts ordinarily should not alter election rules on the eve of an election and that the district court had improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign.
Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented, emphasizing that the district court held a nine-day hearing, heard from 23 witnesses, reviewed thousands of exhibits and concluded that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. The dissent argued that clear-error review required deference to the district court's factfinding and that the Supreme Court's stay would guarantee the new map governs the next House elections.
The ruling is an interim order, not a final merits decision, but it sets the governing map unless the appeal changes course. The next procedural step is the timely filing of a notice of appeal and jurisdictional statement; if those papers are filed, the stay remains in place while the Supreme Court acts on the appeal.