❓WHAT HAPPENED: Democrat Party-aligned electioneering groups have filed a challenge to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s order allowing Texas to use its newly drawn congressional map, citing racial gerrymandering concerns.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Justice Samuel Alito, Texas state officials, and so-called voting rights groups opposing the map.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The emergency order was issued on Friday, November 21, 2025, with the challenge filed on Monday; the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
💬KEY QUOTE: Texas argued that altering district lines before the March primary would “disrupt election preparations and confuse voters.”
🎯IMPACT: The Supreme Court’s decision will determine whether Texas’s 2026 map remains in place while litigation continues.
Democrat Party-aligned electioneering groups are challenging Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Friday order allowing Texas to use its newly drawn congressional map. In their filing, made on Monday, the far-left election lawfare organizations contend the state’s redistricting plan is an “extraordinary” case of racial gerrymandering.
The complaint argues the lower court was correct in finding that black and Hispanic voters were likely to prevail on claims that the new congressional map is an illegal gerrymander that is intended to dilute the minority vote in several districts. Alito issued the emergency order on November 21, ruling the Texas map could remain in place while the full court considers the legal challenge.
Texas urged the high court to settle the matter swiftly, warning that any change to district lines months before the March primary would cause logistical chaos for voters and likely disrupt the primary election. In addition, the state is pointing to the Purcell rule, which generally advises federal courts not to intervene in district map challenges and ballot rules close to an election.
“The district court’s injunction comes far too late in the day under Purcell. Campaigns have begun in the 2025 districts. The candidate filing period ends on December 8. Ballots will then soon be printed, checked and re-checked, and sent overseas. In the middle of all of that, the district court has ordered the State to stop,” Texas Solicitor General William R. Peterson wrote in the state’s emergency appeal filed late last week. He continued: “Worse, because there is no time for remedial proceedings by the district court’s own admission, the district court has ordered the State to replace the 2025 districts in medias res with repealed redistricting legislation—reviving the 2021 map that changes all but one of Texas’s 38 congressional districts, in many cases changing them dramatically.”
A three-judge federal panel in El Paso ruled two-to-one last week that Texas’s latest redistricting plan was likely drawn with discriminatory intent. However, the majority’s ruling was blasted by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Jerry Smith in his dissent, with the jurist alleging his colleague, Judge Jeffrey Brown, had engaged in judicial misconduct.
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