Supreme Court Gives Texas Republicans a Big Boost in 2018 and Beyond

The five conservative justices kept in place redistricting maps a lower court found discriminatory.

Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy at Gorsuch's swearing-in ceremony in April.Rex Features/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The conservative majority on the Supreme Court waded into the legal battle over Texas’ redistricting maps, allowing the state to retain congressional and state House district lines that were found discriminatory by a lower court. The court’s decision, issued over the dissent of the four liberal justices, means that districts that appeared set to become more competitive will now be more easily retained by Republicans in 2018.

The court did not rule on whether Texas’ maps were discriminatory. Instead, it granted Texas’ request to keep the old maps in place until the Supreme Court has reviewed the lower court’s finding of racial discrimination. The decision is a sign that the court may be sympathetic to the state when it issues a final ruling on the issue, likely next year.

The ruling is not just a political blow to Democrats seeking to regain the House of Representatives in 2018. It’s a harbinger of where the Supreme Court stands on the question of discriminatory redistricting. After Texas created new maps in 2011, a federal district court in Texas this year found that certain districts in those maps—as well as slightly altered maps adopted in 2013—were drawn in a way that discriminated against Hispanic and African American voters. The court also found that the Republican-controlled legislature intentionally discriminated in creating those districts. The issue of intentionality is important because it allows the courts to place Texas under a process laid out by the 1965 Voting Rights Act called “preclearance,” under which all changes to elections would have to be approved by the federal government. Courts have repeatedly found that Texas sought to undercut the power of minority voters through its political maps, voter ID law, and other election reforms. The state has lost nine racial discrimination cases since 2011.

But the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to halt the creation of new electoral maps signals that the conservative majority is skeptical of the lower courts’ discrimination findings and likely to uphold the maps. As election law expert Rick Hasen noted on his blog, “What this means is that the 5 conservative Justices, including Justice Kennedy, are sufficiently confident that Texas could win this case (or that the plaintiffs won’t suffer that much harm to have another election under unconstitutional and illegal lines) to grant this stay.” In other words, Democrats and voting rights groups hoping to sway Justice Anthony Kennedy, the conservative swing vote on the court, could face an uphill battle.

The Supreme Court is unlikely to issue a final ruling on the maps before June, at which point it will be too late to create new maps ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate