Supreme Court Allows Texas to Use Challenged Congressional Map

In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, 607 U.S. ____ (2025), the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a district court order blocking Texas’s newly drawn congressional map. The Court’s decision clears the way for the state to use its map for the 2026 election. 

Facts of the Case

In recent months, several States have redrawn their congressional districts in ways designed to favor the State’s dominant political party. As the Supreme Court described in its opinion, Texas adopted the first new map, then California responded with its own map for the stated purpose of counteracting what Texas had done. North Carolina followed suit, and other States are also considering new maps.

Texas’s new map quickly drew legal challenges. A group of plaintiffs, led by the League of United Latin American Citizens, allege that Texas largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map, in violation of the Constitution’s Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In response, Texas officials maintain that race had nothing to do with the redistricting process. According to the State, its officials acted only to protect Republican incumbents in the House and to pick up another five predictably Republican seats.

A divided three-judge District Court sided with the challengers. “Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote. The court enjoined the use of the new map in the 2026 elections and ordered Texas to revert to the repealed 2021 map. With the 2026 campaign underway, the State of Texas and several of its officials applied to the Supreme Court for a stay.

Majority Opinion

On December 4, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the application for stay. In a brief, unsigned opinion, the Court found that “Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors.”

According to the majority, the district court’s first error was “failing to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.” It erred again by failing to draw a dispositive or near-dispositive adverse inference against respondents even though they did not produce a viable alternative map that met the State’s avowedly partisan goals.

The majority further determined that Texas also made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equities and public interest favor it. In support, the majority noted that the Court has “repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.” Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, 589 U.S. 423, 424 (2020) (per curiam). In this case, the majority found that the district court “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

Dissent

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. “[T]his Court today announces that Texas may run next year’s elections with a map the District Court found to have violated all our oft-repeated strictures about the use of race in districting,” Justice Kagan wrote. She further contended that the majority’s order “disrespects the work of a District Cour that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge—that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right.”