The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Texas Republicans’ new GOP-heavy congressional map, handing the party a key victory as it heads into what is predicted to be a bruising midterm cycle.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court reversed a lower court’s finding that the map was designed to weaken the voting power of racial minorities. All three liberal justices dissented. While not the final decision in the case, it solidifies the map through at least the November midterms.

In a short, unsigned order, the conservative majority said the lower court had failed to presume legislative good faith and had instead relied on "ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence." They also argued that it was too close to an election to abandon the new map. The candidate filing period in Texas is set to end on Monday.

"The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections," the majority wrote.

The order further scrambles the political landscape for several incumbent Democrats, including longtime U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, who has vowed not to run for reelection if the redrawn districts survived. Republicans have also configured the boundaries to eliminate Democratic-held seats in Houston and Dallas, and to fill two in South Texas with more GOP voters.

In Houston, the new map combines two districts that had Black Democratic representation into just one and creates an open GOP-leaning seat that stretches from the East End to Liberty County. U.S. Rep. Al Green, whose 9th district was redrawn, will now have to weigh running in the neighboring 18th district against up-and-coming Democrats Christian Menefee or Amanda Edwards, who are locked in a runoff to finish the late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner's term.

The court's three dissenting justices defended the lower court's rationale, writing that plaintiffs had shown that Texas "largely divided its citizens along racial lines to create its new pro-Republican House map." They also slammed their colleagues’ assertion that it was too close to an election to strike down the map, saying that if that were true, any state wanting to pass a “blatantly unconstitutional” map could simply pass it months before the election, as Texas did.

"Today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Kentanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.

The state’s unusual mid-decade redistricting push touched off a political arms race across the country, with voters in California last month approving their own Democratic-led redistricting effort. 

Last month, a pair of lower court judges blocked the Texas map, ruling it likely violated the U.S. Constitution because the districts were drawn based on race, rather than purely for partisan gain. Federal Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote that state leaders had clearly relied on a directive from the Department of Justice to dismantle Democratic-held “coalition” districts, which have more than 50% non-white voters without any single ethnic group holding the majority. 

Brown rejected an argument that it would be too disruptive to toss the new map so close to an election, saying it was the Legislature’s fault that the map and subsequent court challenge came near the Dec. 8 filing deadline. Texas Republicans have blamed Democrats for delaying the map’s passage in a three-week-long quorum break, and insisted that Republican lawmakers had in fact drawn the maps purely for partisan gain. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a three-term Republican whose office represented the state in the lawsuit, said the ruling shuts down Democratic efforts to meddle with the decisions of the Legislature.

“Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state," Paxton said in a statement. "This map reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.” 

Texas House Democratic leader Gene Wu of Houston, who led a two-week walkout this summer to slow down the Republican redistricting effort, called the ruling a gut punch to voting rights for minority communities.

"Every Texan who testified against these maps should be angry," he said in a statement. "Every community that fought for generations to build political power and watched Republicans gerrymander it away should be angry."

U.S. Rep Lizzie Fletcher, a four-term Democrat from Houston, said the high court effectively silenced many voters.

“The Texas map that the Supreme Court has now permitted to go into effect for the 2026 elections betrays the fundamental principle that all Texans should have a say in our government," Fletcher said in a statement.

View this article in the Houston Chronicle.