In a major blow to voting rights, the Supreme Court ruled five-to-four along ideological lines on Tuesday to stay two recent lower court rulings that had ordered Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional and state House districts. Earlier this year, a panel of district court judges found that GOP lawmakers had intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters in coming up with these maps, rendering them unconstitutional. But the high court’s conservative majority has now put the order to draw new maps on hold while it considers an appeal by Republicans, which could mean there won’t be a final decision until next June.

This latest delay—with new maps finally in sight—is particularly infuriating, since lawsuits over these districts have been ongoing for six years, and lower courts have ruled four times this year alone that these lines not only discriminated against black and Latino voters but were intentionally crafted to do so. But thanks to the very slow gears of justice and a conservative Supreme Court majority that is hostile to the very notion of voting rights, we may not get redrawn districts until the 2020 elections.

And that’s only if the plaintiffs prevail on the merits: The Supreme Court could turn back their complaint entirely. But even if plaintiffs eventually succeed, Republicans will have gotten away with illegal gerrymandering for four out of the decade’s five election cycles. After 2020, the decennial census will require new lines anyway—and will give the GOP yet another chance to draw lines to suit itself.

But no matter the outcome, Republicans have benefitted hugely. They'll continue to draw illegal, intentionally racist gerrymanders when they can count on the glacial pace of litigation to guarantee they get to use those maps for multiple election cycles. These cases demonstrate why it’s critical to restore the Voting Rights Act’s oversight provisions so that the Justice Department under a future Democratic president can block these discriminatory maps from going into effect without resorting to years of citizen lawsuits after the fact. This Supreme Court order proves an old maxim correct: Justice delayed is justice denied.