Scotus lets Texas use 2026 congressional map in 6-3 ruling

scotus let Texas use its new congressional map for the 2026 midterms on Monday, overturning a lower court ruling that had blocked the lines. The 6-3 decision keeps the map in place for the next federal election cycle. Justice Samuel Alito said the lower court had “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.”

Texas map and the 6-3 split

The ruling leaves Texas’s newly shaped districts available for the 2026 midterms after a lower court found the state had unconstitutionally diluted the voting power of racial minorities. That lower court opinion came from a Trump appointee and followed a nine-day trial with dozens of experts and more than 3,000 pages of evidence.

Alito wrote a concurrence joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. He argued that the lower court had failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith that the Texas Legislature earned. The majority’s action also overturned the district court on the shadow docket.

Texas midcycle redistricting

Texas began its midcycle redistricting effort after a letter from Trump’s administration. The state’s mapmakers were accused of trying to rig the 2026 election for Texas Republicans by spreading out Black and Hispanic voters away from one another. The district court concluded that Texas had unconstitutionally used race in its mapmaking.

Federal law allows political gerrymandering but not using race as the predominant factor, and that line shaped the dispute over Texas’s map. In December, the Supreme Court already issued a shadow docket ruling staying the district court’s decision and allowing the new map to go into effect while the case continued.

The practical result is that Texas voters will head toward the 2026 midterms under the map the Supreme Court has now left in place. The lower court’s finding of racial dilution no longer blocks those districts from being used in the next federal election.