Washington might see its legislative maps get redrawn once again, after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted a petition related to a long-running dispute over the state's 2020 redistricting process.

It won't happen before the 2026 midterm elections. But Monday's development is the latest twist in the saga of Washington's redistricting efforts.

The high court's acceptance of the case this week comes after a commission redrew Washington's political maps in 2021, and then U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik signed off on new boundaries in 2024, in the face of a legal challenge by Latino voters.

Lasnik ruled that maps drawn after the most recent census hampered Latino voters in the Pasco area and Yakima Valley from electing candidates whom they might prefer.

Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case that effectively watered down the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Known as Louisiana v. Callais, the decision altered criteria upon which lower court judges might decide a redistricting case.

On Monday, the high court both accepted the latest legal challenge and sent it back down to a lower court to determine if the maps drawn in 2024 are OK under the new ruling.

State Rep. Alex Ybarra, R-Quincy, is one of the petitioners bringing the lawsuit and described the court’s decision as “a pretty good day.”

Ybarra, who represents the 13th Legislative District, is one of a handful of Republican lawmakers who are Hispanic and who represent the region. That’s proof, he said, that the Hispanic community is represented there already.

“If the case goes through and we win the case, I imagine that we’re going back to the 2021 legislative-approved lines,” Ybarra said.

In an email, Mike Faulk, spokesperson for the Washington state attorney general's office, said that the court Monday actually granted what the state sought.

We wanted the lower courts to have the first opportunity to apply the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, and that is what the Supreme Court did today," Faulk wrote.

The high court's decision returned the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and "we plan to ask the Ninth Circuit to now remand it back to district court, Faulk wrote.

Washington's once-a-decade redistricting effort got off to a rocky start, with its members blowing their own legal deadline to approve redrawn maps in 2021.

The redistricting commission later admitted that its members violated Washington's Open Public Meetings Act, paying legal costs and fines of more than $137,000 to settle a pair of lawsuits filed by government transparency groups.

That night, the commissioners reappeared shortly before midnight to rush through votes on purportedly final deals for new maps that weren't displayed publicly. The commission members the next day acknowledged that, in reality, they failed to reach agreement before the deadline.

Blowing the deadline meant Washington’s election maps went to the state Supreme Court, which decided to keep the maps.

The commission pledged to reform itself to prevent a repeat of its illegal conduct on the night of negotiations.

A 2022 lawsuit by a group of Latino voters claimed those redistricting maps could have given Latino voters a substantial majority in the 15th Legislative District, which stretches through the Pasco area to the Yakima Valley, but instead drew boundaries giving Latino voters only a slight majority.

The lawsuit led to the judge redrawing the legislative boundaries in 2024.

If the courts hold that the boundaries must be redrawn again, new maps could be approved in time for the 2027 elections. Those off-year elections sometimes feature special elections for the Legislature.

The next redistricting maps are set to be drawn after the 2030 census.

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