The Supreme Court reinstated a Texas gerrymander that is expected to give Republicans five additional seats in the US House on Thursday evening, after a lower federal court struck that gerrymander down. As is often the case in politically contentious cases, the justices appear to have voted entirely along party lines, with only the Court’s three Democrats dissenting.
The Court’s decision in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is a victory for the Republican Party. And it is likely to have brutal implications for all future federal lawsuits challenging gerrymandered maps. Though the Court’s order in LULAC is brief, it imposes such heavy burdens on gerrymandering plaintiffs that few, if any, such plaintiffs will be able to succeed in future cases.
Indeed, LULAC is so hostile to anti-gerrymandering suits that many civil rights lawyers and plaintiffs may simply decide not to bother challenging illegal maps, because their chances of prevailing in court will be so hopeless.
The Supreme Court had already made it exceedingly difficult to challenge gerrymandered maps
To understand LULAC, it’s helpful to also understand a distinction between two different types of gerrymanders. Often, state legislatures draw maps that favor whichever party controls that legislature. These maps are known as “partisan” gerrymanders. Other times, states may draw their maps to change the racial makeup of various legislative districts, often to give an advantage to white voters. These maps are known as “racial” gerrymanders.
As a practical matter, the line between racial and partisan gerrymanders is often thin. Black Americans, for example, tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. So a map that seeks to maximize Republican power will often closely resemble a map that seeks to minimize Black representation.
Prior to LULAC, however, it mattered a great deal whether courts determined that a particular map was drawn for partisan or racial reasons. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Supreme Court’s Republican majority held that federal courts may not hear challenges to partisan gerrymanders. So, if a court determined that a disputed map was drawn entirely for partisan reasons, the map would be upheld.
The Court has also taken several steps to undercut plaintiffs challenging racial gerrymanders, and it is expected to eliminate the Voting Rights Act’s safeguards against these gerrymanders later in its current term. But, prior to LULAC, there was still one set of circumstances when a plaintiff challenging a racial gerrymander could prevail. As the Court held in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP (2024), “if a legislature gives race a predominant role in redistricting decisions, the resulting map is subjected” to the most skeptical level of constitutional scrutiny.
This matters because, before Texas enacted the gerrymander at the heart of the LULAC case, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department sent a letter to Texas that essentially ordered it to redraw its maps to change their racial makeup. The DOJ claimed, falsely, that it is illegal for a state to draw any map that includes a district where white people are in the minority, and two other racial groups combine to make up the majority. And it threatened to sue Texas unless the state eliminated districts that fit this description.
As the lower court that struck down the maps explained in its opinion, there is considerable evidence that Texas decided to draw its new gerrymandered maps in order to comply with this letter.
The Supreme Court’s order in LULAC doesn’t explicitly contest this conclusion. But it faults the lower court for not applying a very strong presumption against plaintiffs challenging a racial gerrymander. “The District Court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature,” according to the LULAC majority.
Two things can be said about this conclusion. The first is that the Court’s Republican majority has said, in Abbott v. Perez (2018) and some later decisions, that state legislatures enjoy a presumption of racial innocence when they draw legislative districts. The second is that, in LULAC, there was in fact considerable evidence supporting both the plaintiffs’ claim that Texas drew its lines for racial reasons, and Texas’s claim that it drew them for partisan reasons.
But LULAC seems to conclude that, when there is evidence on either side, courts must construe that evidence in favor of the state and uphold the challenged map. It may still be possible for civil rights plaintiffs to challenge racial gerrymanders when the evidence of racial bias is simply overwhelming, but cases like that are exceedingly rare.
LULAC’s strong presumption against anti-gerrymandering plaintiffs, moreover, will likely make it nearly impossible to challenge maps that target Black voters. Because nearly any map that seeks to diminish Black representation will closely resemble a map drawn for partisan purposes, there will almost always be some evidence that an anti-Black racial gerrymander was drawn solely to achieve partisan ends.
The LULAC majority also faults the plaintiffs in this case for not producing “a viable alternative map that met the State’s avowedly partisan goals.” This line imposes a rigid rule that anyone challenging an alleged racial gerrymander must produce a map that is just as partisan as the one drawn by the state, but that does not divide voters based on race.
The Court did previously say, in Alexander, that a plaintiff’s failure to submit such a map “may be dispositive in many, if not most, cases where the plaintiff lacks direct evidence or some extraordinarily powerful circumstantial evidence” that a state drew its lines for racial reasons. But the lower court in LULAC found considerable direct evidence that Texas drew its lines to comply with the DOJ’s demand for a racial gerrymander. LULAC, by contrast, says that any plaintiff’s failure to produce an alternative map is a “near-dispositive” reason for them to lose their case.
The upshot of this new, “near-dispositive” requirement is that racial gerrymanders will only be vulnerable when it is possible to draw an equally partisan map with fewer racial implications. If the only way for Texas to maximize Republican voting power is to crack up Black and Latino communities, LULAC establishes that Texas may nearly always do so.
Additionally, there’s also a troubling line in the Court’s LULAC order faulting the lower court for “alter[ing] the election rules on the eve of an election.” It is unclear whether the justices considered the timing of the lower court’s order when it weighed the merits of the LULAC case, but the line is still troubling because it is obviously factually false. The lower court did not hand down its decision on the “eve of an election.” It declared the Texas gerrymander unconstitutional on November 18, 2025 — almost a full year before the 2026 midterm elections.
In any event, it is fair to describe the LULAC decision as merely an incremental step towards full lawsuit immunity for states that draw gerrymandered maps. The Court, in cases like Rucho, Perez, and Alexander, already made it very difficult to challenge a gerrymander of any kind. LULAC merely adds new burdens to already beleaguered plaintiffs.
But the cumulative effect of these burdens is likely to prove overwhelming for nearly all litigants who oppose racial or partisan gerrymanders. The Court’s Republican majority appears to be washing its hands of responsibility for gerrymandering altogether. And it is loudly signaling to states that they can do whatever they want.
