The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday night temporarily restored Texas’ GOP-heavy congressional map after a lower court found the redistricting plan was likely racially gerrymandered.
The order from Justice Samuel Alito temporarily protects a map that delivers five additional winnable U.S. House seats to the GOP while the justices consider a more permanent ruling. It came down an hour after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton formally appealed to the high court, asking for a ruling by Dec. 1.
As is customary for temporary orders, Alito did not outline his reasoning. He asked the plaintiffs, a coalition of civil rights groups, to file a response to Paxton’s petition by 5 p.m. Monday.
Congressional candidates in the state began filing for office earlier this month and have until Dec. 8– just over two weeks from now– to declare for the March 3 primaries.
Texas Republicans, at the behest of President Donald Trump, undertook the unusual step of redrawing the state’s map mid-decade as a means to minimize any Republican losses in the closely divided U.S. House. Republicans hold a slender majority, and national Democrats see an opportunity to wrest control after the elections.
The lower court’s order had found the new map likely violated the U.S. Constitution because it was drawn based on race, rather than purely for partisan gain. Texas leaders have insisted that their aim in redistricting is to pick up new GOP seats. But Gov. Greg Abbott and others also cited a letter from the Trump administration ahead of the effort that called for a redraw to fix past racially based decisions. By noting the document, the lower court found that Abbott “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race.”
The Supreme Court justices did not weigh in on that argument in its decision Friday. The uncertainty from the legal case is reminiscent of what unfolded in late 2011 when the Republican-friendly congressional map drawn by the Legislature was declared unconstitutional.
At that time the first new map drafted by a three-judge panel was set aside. A second court-drawn map was finally put in place, but it came so late in the process that the 2012 primaries had to be delayed.
