New Texas congressional maps drawn to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm election are here to stay, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
Texas lawmakers approved the maps at President Donald Trump’s request last summer, and candidates quickly started lining up for races based on those new boundaries.
Though Democrats have long insisted GOP leaders broke the law by packing minority voters into a smaller number of districts, their brief victory in a federal court last November was quickly reversed by a temporary Supreme Court order aimed at providing candidates clarity during the filing period to run for office.
Since then, the new maps have been treated as law of the land, and got the official seal of approval from a conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Monday.
Three justices appointed by Democrat presidents, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.
Republicans currently hold a razor-thin U.S. House majority, and party leaders hoped to protect it by adding more GOP-friendly seats in Texas.
But Monday’s decision comes as some in the party have started to question the wisdom of such changes, which could potentially backfire in a wave election.
First, Texas’ so-called mid-cycle redistricting effort — meaning redistricting that occurred outside of the traditional Census cycle — set off a chain reaction in blue states trying to shore of their respective party leaders’ advantage.
For example Virginia, the latest to follow suit, just approved maps that give Democrats an advantage in its congressional races last week.
Democrats have also been winning special elections in some deeply red territory in recent months — including a 31-point swing in a Fort Worth state Senate seat in January — indicating that even some typically safe Republican seats could be in play this November.
The goal of Texas’ new maps was to give Republicans as many as five additional pickup opportunities in an already GOP-dominated congressional delegation.
They’re likely to win at least two of those in November, but in a nod to the shifting landscape, national Democrats are now reserving ads to try to win the new 35th Congressional District, which was drawn to give Republicans another seat on San Antonio’s Southeast side.
They’re also on offense in the deep-red 23rd Congressional District, which is now vacant after scandal-plagued Republican Tony Gonzales resigned this month.
Read more: In fight for the U.S. House majority, Democrats target two uphill San Antonio-area races
Deep-blue Bexar County was one of the biggest targets of Republicans’ redistricting effort, shifting 43% of residents into a new district to get rid of one of the county’s two long-standing deep blue seats.
Find out which district you landed in using this tool from the Texas Tribune.
