A Thoughtful Child Could Spot the Problem With the Supreme Court’s Sloppy Pro-Gerrymandering Decision
The shadow docket order in the Texas redistricting case provides state lawmakers with step-by-step instructions for drawing discriminatory maps without having to worry about judicial review.
One of the most vexing myths about the Supreme Court is the level of care that it supposedly employs when deciding cases. Even the form these opinions take is designed to impress upon you, the reader, the depth of the justices’ deliberate, methodical analysis: There are references to facts, and lengthy parentheticals quoting persuasive authority, and string pincites to the exact pages of the United States Reports that lead inexorably to the Court’s unimpeachable conclusions.
Cases like Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the Court’s Thursday shadow docket order reinstating Texas Republicans’ racially gerrymandered map for the 2026 midterm elections, demonstrate just how vapid and shallow the decisionmaking process can actually be. As Justice Elena Kagan points out in dissent for all three liberals, the unsigned majority opinion helpfully shows state lawmakers they can hold future elections using blatantly illegal maps without ever having to worry about the threat of judicial review, as long as lawmakers time the rollout of their racist redistricting plans just right.
Among Kagan’s many beefs with the majority is its invocation of the Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts, in order to avoid causing “voter confusion,” should not “ordinarily” alter election rules close to an election. The opinion in Abbott, which I would bet your life savings is a Brett Kavanaugh special, argues that the district court that blocked Texas’s gerrymander violated Purcell by “improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
To any normal person whose brain is not pickled in the maddening vagaries of the Supreme Court’s recent election law jurisprudence, this does not pass the laugh test. The 2026 midterms will take place 11 months from now, and even if you decide to be generous to Texas Republicans and count the primaries as the relevant elections under Purcell, those aren’t happening until March. As Kagan put it, “except to the extent all of us live in election season all the time, the 2026 congressional election is not well underway,” in any meaningful sense. But the majority’s position is that continuing to use the same map from Texas’s previous two elections is more likely to cause “voter confusion” than suddenly replacing it with a brand new, even more pro-Republican map at President Donald Trump’s behest.
From there, Kagan details the effort to which the parties in this case went to try and avoid a Purcell trap: After Texas lawmakers unveiled their map in August 2025, the plaintiffs immediately asked for an injunction, and declined discovery in the interest of expediency. The district court published its 160-page opinion just a month after the parties finished briefing the case. But for the conservative justices, none of this matters: By acting sufficiently “close” to the election, Texas Republicans ensured that any court order interfering with their gerrymander would run afoul of the Purcell principle—at least, as they knew this six-justice conservative supermajority would apply it.
You do not have to have a law degree to understand the conduct blessed by this logic: Going forward, a legislature that wants to institute a map that draws Black people out of electoral existence doesn’t have to put in a bunch of effort to conceal its motives. It simply has to wait until within six months of the election, and count on the Court to declare that the solemn duty to prevent “voter confusion” makes lower court judges powerless to do anything about it. “That cannot be the law—except of course that today it is,” Kagan wrote.
There are two explanations for the Court’s decision: Either the conservative justices wanted to empower lawmakers to discriminate against voters of color, or they are too dumb to understand that in their haste, they provided a step-by-step instruction manual for doing exactly that.
Correction: An earlier version of this post stated that Texas Republicans unveiled the map at issue in this case in August 2024. They did so in August 2025.
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When I read that they based the order on Purcell I thought it was a joke. Nope, read it first on Democracy Dockett. Ugh this court fucking sucks.
Ya Know Roberts was one of the assholes stopping the count in 2000 in Florida as a young associate. The brooks brothers revolution. 🤮 this shit should surprise no one.