To justify their brazen effort to redraw US House districts in Texas ahead of the 2026 midterms, state Republicans cited a Department of Justice letter alleging that four districts—all represented by Black or Latino Democrats—were “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”
But on Tuesday, President Trump said the quiet part out loud, admitting that a “very simple redrawing” of the congressional map would allow Republicans to “pick up five seats,” thereby making it much harder for Democrats to reclaim the US House.
Normally, a president directly undermining the constitutional argument of his Justice Department with a blatantly partisan justification would jeopardize the legality of any resulting map. But the GOP has a potential escape hatch: the conservative supermajority on the US Supreme Court.
In the 2019 case, Rucho v. Common Cause, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that federal courts could not review, let alone strike down, claims of partisan gerrymandering. That decision upheld an overtly gerrymandered map in North Carolina. And, nationwide, it meant that politicians were free to draw skewed redistricting maps as long as they did so for political reasons—like Trump’s plans for Texas.
The Rucho decision has already shaped control of the US House. After the case, North Carolina Republicans passed yet another aggressive gerrymander following the 2020 census that was struck down by the Democratic majority on the state supreme court. But when the Court flipped to GOP control after the 2022 midterms, it overruled the previous decision invalidating the maps, citing the Rucho decision. That allowed North Carolina Republicans to draw a new gerrymandered map ahead of the 2024 election that gave the GOP three new seats, helping them retain control of the US House.
“We would have been in the majority if North Carolina hadn’t egregiously redistricted and eliminated three Democratic seats.”
“We would have been in the majority if North Carolina hadn’t egregiously redistricted and eliminated three Democratic seats,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Texas is now following North Carolina’s example.
Roberts claimed that the Rucho opinion did not “condone excessive partisan gerrymandering” and said that states could still take action to prevent it, such as adopting independent redistricting commissions or bringing litigation in state courts.
But those are not options in Texas, which prohibits citizen-led ballot initiatives and has an all-Republican state supreme court that rarely breaks with the actions of the GOP-controlled legislature.
The only remedy, at the federal level, is if maps can be shown to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Voting Rights Act or the US Constitution. Indeed, in every redistricting cycle since the passage of the VRA, Texas has been found guilty of doing just that. Civil rights groups sued the state over its post-2020 congressional map, alleging that Republicans intentionally discriminated against Black and Hispanic voters, since 95 percent of the state’s population growth over the previous decade came from people of color. Nonetheless, the state drew two new seats in areas with white majorities. A federal trial recently concluded, with the verdict pending.
But the Supreme Court has also made it harder to challenge racial gerrymandering as well. In 2024, the conservative justices upheld a South Carolina congressional map that civil rights groups said discriminated against Black voters. And it recently postponed a ruling on the legality of Louisiana drawing a new majority-Black congressional district, leading to fears that the court’s conservative majority is preparing to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. If Texas Republicans pick up new seats by dismantling districts represented by Black or Hispanic Democrats—as they seem likely to do—it’s hard to feel confident that the Supreme Court would stop them. (The Court has already upheld, with the exception of one district, a prior mid-decade redistricting effort by Texas Republicans that took place in 2003.)
The GOP scheme in Texas could still backfire. Texas Democrats may flee the state to block the legislature from passing any map, as national Democrats are urging them to do. Blue states could undertake their own mid-decade redistricting efforts, although large Democratic states like California and New York are constrained by independent redistricting commissions. Texas Republicans, at Trump’s urging, could get too aggressive, jeopardizing some of their own members by moving too many GOP voters into Democrat-held districts.
But, in the end, if Trump and his allies in Texas are acting as if they exist in a legal-free zone, there is one simple reason: John Roberts.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.