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Federal judges block Texas from using its new US House map in the 2026 midterms
Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision
New maps that added five Republican districts in Texas hit a legal roadblock on Tuesday, with a federal judge saying the state cannot use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.
The decision is likely to be appealed, given the push for more Republican-friendly congressional maps nationwide and Donald Trump’s full-court press on his party to make them. Some states have followed suit, and some Democratic states have retaliated, pushing to add more blue seats to counteract Republicans.
A panel of three federal judges in Texas said in a decision that the state must use previously approved 2021 maps for next year’s midterms rather than the ones that kickstarted a wave of mid-decade redistricting. The plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, are “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map”, so the court approved a preliminary injunction to stop the map’s use for next year’s elections.
Texas Republicans, under pressure from the Trump administration, redrew the state’s congressional maps earlier this year to make them more favorable to Republicans. But, Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote, the district changes were not purely partisan: “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” Brown wrote. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
Typically, redistricting happens after a new decade’s census results. Maps are often fought over, inviting lawsuits that can take years to resolve. In some states, the process is done by lawmakers, while in others, by independent bodies. Courts now cannot stop maps drawn for partisan reasons, but they can intervene if maps are racially gerrymandered.
Brown pointed to Texas lawmakers’ responses to the justice department. Lawmakers initially resisted the idea of redrawing maps for purely partisan reasons, but moved forward after the Trump administration “reframed” the idea of redistricting around racial makeup. A July letter from the head of the department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four of Texas’s congressional districts were unconstitutional. She threatened legal action if the state did not redraw these “coalition districts”, where no single racial group made up a majority of voters – “a threat based entirely on their racial makeup”, Brown wrote.
“Notably, the [justice department] letter targeted only majority-non-white districts,” the decision says. “Any mention of majority-white Democrat districts – which [the justice department] presumably would have also targeted if its aims were partisan rather than racial – was conspicuously absent.” The legislature and governor’s office then followed suit on these demands from the justice department, Brown said, noting statements made by local officials on their reasoning.
“The governor explicitly directed the legislature to redistrict based on race,” Brown wrote. “In press appearances, the governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.”
I have read a few things that suggest the GOP gerrymander effort is not necessarily going to work out in their favor. That it might even backfire. That some in the GOP are against it altogether.
Yes, I've seen similar, from a number of different states. I wonder if the CA process will still go through. If it does, that would be a real interesting situation.
Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map- Texas quickly filed a notice of appeal to the Supreme Court.
A federal court in Texas on Tuesday blocked the state’s newly redrawn and Republican-friendly congressional map from going into effect in the 2026 midterm elections, dealing a blow to an effort by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state: “The Court orders that the 2026 congressional election in Texas shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021,” the court said, issuing a preliminary injunction barring the map’s use.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who directed state legislators to redraw the congressional map this summer, quickly said the state would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state filed its notice of appeal later on Tuesday. It would be likely to go first to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., one of the court’s conservatives, because he is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from that region of the country.
In the Texas court’s 160-page opinion written by Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019, the judges found that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
Mr. Abbott criticized the decision, saying in a statement that “the Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason.”
At the outset of this year’s sudden and unusual push to redraw congressional maps in the middle of the decade, it appeared that Mr. Trump and Republicans had the upper hand, with their party in control of the mapmaking process in more states. But since Texas passed its map in August, Democrats have countered with a gerrymander of their own in California, with Virginia and potentially other states set to follow.
Should the federal court decision in Texas hold, Democrats could find themselves ahead in the redistricting battle. (Republicans have also sued to challenge the new California map, adding even more uncertainty to the national picture.)
A major wild card in the national fight over maps is the fate of the Voting Rights Act, which faces a critical test at the Supreme Court this term. The justices appeared skeptical in October of upholding a key provision of the law. If the court strikes down that provision, which allows lawmakers to consider race when drawing districts, Republicans in states across the South would be able to tear up their maps and wipe out a series of seats held by Democrats of color.
At the same time, the Texas court decision signals that litigation could still be a bulwark against both parties’ efforts to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. Courts have long been the venue for civil rights groups and political parties to challenge the validity of maps, and nearly every newly passed congressional map this year is already facing legal challenges.
The legal battle is taking place against a fast-moving political clock in Texas. The deadline for candidates to file to run next year is early next month, and the primary elections are scheduled for March. Republicans control both chambers of the State Legislature and moved swiftly to enact a new map that took aim at urban districts in and around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, as well as along the border with Mexico.
During the legislative hearings over the summer, Republican lawmakers repeatedly stressed that they were redrawing the congressional lines for partisan purposes, to advantage Republicans, and not based on race. Such a distinction is critical after the Supreme Court effectively blessed partisan gerrymandering in a 2019 ruling.
But in its opinion, the court cited statements that Mr. Abbott and legislative leaders had made that suggested they had drawn their map to alleviate the Justice Department’s concerns about the racial makeup of districts — and not for purely partisan reasons.
“For these and other reasons, the Plaintiff Groups are likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” the court wrote.
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Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision
Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map- Texas quickly filed a notice of appeal to the Supreme Court.