Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens: Supreme Court Revisits Race, Politics, and Vote Dilution in Texas Redistricting
Preceding a heated midterm election cycle, the Department of Justice issued a letter to the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, giving legal authority to redistrict the state in the middle of the decade, highlighting the supposed white dilution of certain coalition districts. The following Republican-benefiting map proposed by the Texas legislature engendered a lawsuit from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), calling attention to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits electoral practices that result in minority voters having “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process.”
A three-judge federal district court held a 9-day hearing, ultimately finding that several districts violated Section 2 and that at least one congressional district constituted intentional racial discrimination, triggering strict scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment. Texas appealed directly to the Supreme Court, as permitted in redistricting cases under 28 U.S.C. § 1253.
Texas’s central argument is that the district court improperly conflated race with politics. The state maintains that its mapmakers relied on partisan data rather than racial classifications, and that any disparate impact on minority voters reflects lawful, correlative partisan gerrymandering rather than unconstitutional racial sorting. This distinction matters because the Court has held that partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable political questions (Rucho v. Common Cause (2019)), while racial gerrymandering remains subject to strict judicial review (Shaw v. Reno (1993); Miller v. Johnson (1995)). Texas warns that ruling in favor of Section 2 liability in this case would effectively force states to engage in race-based line drawing to avoid such lawsuits, raising constitutional concerns of its own.
LULAC counters that Texas’s position misunderstands the Section 2 doctrine. Under Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), plaintiffs must show that a minority group is sufficiently large and compact to form a majority in a district, is politically cohesive, and is usually defeated by bloc voting from the majority. The district court found all three conditions satisfied, along with extensive evidence that Texas lawmakers were aware of, and acted upon, the racial consequences of their choices. According to the challengers, insulating such conduct under the label of “politics” would hollow out the Voting Rights Act.
On December 4, 2025, the Supreme Court decided to grant the stay (effectively allowing Texas to utilize the contested maps in the upcoming midterms), emphasizing the boundary between racial and partisan gerrymandering and placing a heavy evidentiary burden on challengers. Relying on Easley v. Cromartie (2001) and Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (2024), the Court reasoned that the challengers’ inability to produce an alternative map with equal partisan benefit and less racial bias supports the inference that partisanship motivated the redistricting efforts. That showing was sufficient to foreclose strict scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment and preclude Section 2 relief for purposes of granting a stay.
In dissent, Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, argued that the Court abandoned clear-error review and improperly displaced extensive district-court fact-finding. In ruling for a stay, Kagan argues, the Supreme Court is of no higher quality than the District Court, only of higher authority. Therefore, lacking the necessary criticism of the court's procedural error, it is the Supreme Court's imperative to uphold the lower court’s ruling, warning that the majority’s approach risks allowing racial gerrymanders to evade constitutional scrutiny under the guise of politics. Her efforts, however, did not sway the majority, and the court ruled in favor of Texas.
In an effort to deliver a clear, decisive message, the Court has permitted the use of these maps in the 2026 election cycle. However, their grant of a stay is not the same as a merits ruling, and due to the continued distinction between racial and partisan gerrymandering, the country awaits a more definitive investigation into the district court's ruling and the constitutionality of aggressively gerrymandered districts.