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Via an unattributed ruling, the nation's top court permitted Texas to employ a newly configured congressional map that could add several five new conservative-tilting districts. The 6-3 ruling, released on Thursday, upholds a petition by the state to lift a lower court's block that had struck down the redistricting plan in November.

Justices' Reasoning

The lower court wrongly interjected itself into an ongoing primary campaign, causing significant confusion and upsetting the fine balance of power in elections, the supreme court said in explaining its ruling.

The district court had determined that Texas had likely classified voters based on their race – a practice known as racial gerrymandering – when it passed the boundaries. It had mandated the state to employ the districts established after the last decennial survey for the forthcoming election.

Stinging Opposition

With a strongly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan took issue with the majority's ruling. She contended that it undermined the work of the district court, noting that its decision was crafted by a judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.

While our court is superior in jurisdiction, we are not superior in making these fact-intensive determinations, Kagan argued in a opinion supported by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan added, Today's ruling guarantees that Texas's redistricting plan, with all its boosted favoritism, will govern next year's elections. And it guarantees that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be sorted in electoral districts based on their race. And that result, as this court has stated repeatedly, is a infraction of the U.S. Constitution.

National Map-Drawing Fight

The ruling is part of a nationwide fight over the remapping of electoral maps. Texas is a key piece in pushes to transform the U.S. House map to secure a narrow Republican control. Usually, redistricting takes place after a new decade's census. Yet the decision by Texas Republicans to proceed with a brazen off-cycle redistricting earlier this year sparked a series of events among other states.

GOP lawmakers in states like North Carolina and Missouri have also approved new maps that might create several additional Republican-leaning seats. The opposition, meanwhile, have responded with their own plans in including California and Virginia, which are intended to balance those potential gains.

Political Responses

The Texas top lawyer hailed the High Court's decision. In a statement, he said the order protected Texas's prerogative to draw a map that secures electoral outcomes aligned with his party. Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state, he added.

On the other hand, opposition party leaders decried the ruling. It is deeply disheartening that the Court has endorsed this severely racially gerrymandered plan from Texas Republicans, said the chair of a major Democratic election organization.

Another leading House leader said the court had another time damaged its credibility by upholding a race-based map. Tonight's ruling by far-right justices on the supreme court is further proof that the extremists will do anything to rig the midterm elections. The gerrymandered Texas congressional map is a partisan and racially discriminatory power grab designed to subvert the will of the voters – particularly in Black and Latino communities, he added.