Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily allowed Texas to use the Republican-redrawn congressional map that a federal court blocked earlier this week.
Alito’s order comes after Texas asked the high court to intervene following a ruling by a panel of federal judges on Tuesday that barred the state from using new district lines designed to help Republicans gain five additional House seats in next year’s midterm elections.
The lower court ruling, signed by Judge Jeffrey Brown, nominated by President Donald Trump, had ordered Texas to instead use an earlier map drawn in 2021, after finding that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
The administrative stay is a temporary ruling that allows Texas to continue using its new map for now while the Supreme Court reviews the case.
The Supreme Court ordered civil rights groups that challenged the map to file a response by 5 p.m. Monday. The deadline to file candidates in Texas before the March primary is December 8.
The district court’s decision represented a significant setback for Trump, who has urged Republicans in Texas and across the country to enact new maps to help shore up the party’s narrow majority in the House.
While congressional maps are typically reevaluated at the beginning of each decade, when new census data becomes available, the redrawn Texas map sparked a national mid-cycle redistricting battle between both parties. Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina also approved new maps this year to boost their party, while Trump continues to pressure GOP lawmakers in Indiana to do the same.
The Justice Department joined a Republican-led lawsuit challenging a Democratic-drawn map in California that voters approved earlier this month.
