BREAKING: SCOTUS allows Texas redistricting map to go forward

The Supreme Court has struck down a lower court’s order that barred Texas’ new congressional map, which would likely result in five new Republican seats in the House, from taking effect. 

In a short order issued on Monday, the court stated, "we reverse the District Court’s judgment," noting that justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. 

The order comes after the Supreme Court granted an emergency application in late December, allowing the state to use its new congressional map. The order stated, "Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors. First, the District Court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature. Second, the District Court failed 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."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed to the court in January after two judges on a three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas blocked the state from using the map. The appeal stated, "The district court’s conclusion blinks reality. It rests on the premise that the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature chose not to adopt a map that maximized achievement of political goals but instead adopted a map that sacrificed political opportunity in favor of racial discrimination, in a highly polarized political environment with a razor-thin Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. To state such a conclusion is to falsify it."

Texas lawmakers passed the redistricting effort over the summer after Democrats in the state attempted to fight the bill, including a majority of members fleeing the state in an effort to break quorum and block the vote. In response to Texas' redistricting efforts, other Democrat-led states launched their own efforts to redistrict.