California Republicans have filed a lawsuit in hopes of halting Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to fight the Texas GOP’s Trump-ordered gerrymandering with retaliatory redistricting in the Golden State.
As Texas Republicans make a Machiavellian move between censuses to rejigger congressional maps in their party’s favor ahead of the 2026 midterms, Newsom has unveiled a tit-for-tat legislative package dubbed the “Election Rigging Response Act,” or ERRA. Newsom’s plan would redraw California’s maps to offset GOP gerrymandering in Texas or other red states.
In hopes of putting the new maps before California voters in a November 4 special election, state Democrats have expedited the process using a common legislative tactic known as “gut and amend”—in which the content of an existing, unrelated bill was replaced with the redistricting proposal.
Floor votes on the ERRA are expected to take place later this week. But not if California Republicans legislators can help it.
On Tuesday, four Republican legislators in California filed an emergency petition with the state’s Supreme Court, claiming that Newsom’s effort violates the state’s requirement that pieces of legislation undergo a 30-day review period after being introduced.
The lawmakers’ 411-page petition asks that the Supreme Court stay any legislative action on the ERRA for 30 days. Their case will hinge on whether or not California Democrats’ use of “gut and amend” lawfully bypassed the 30-day hold.
Notably, the Republican lawmakers do not challenge “the use of gut and amend for all purposes,” their petition states; their concern “is confined to the narrow case where the Legislature blatantly and intentionally uses it to circumvent a constitutional right of the people to adequate time to review proposed legislation.”
One of the Republican litigant-legislators, State Assemblyman Tri Ta, accused California Democrats of having “effectively shut voters out of engaging in their own legislative process.”
Responding to the lawsuit, a Newsom spokesperson has told the press: “Republicans are filing a deeply unserious (and truly laughable) lawsuit to stop Americans from voting? We’re neither surprised, nor worried.”
Of course, if California Republicans are looking for a surefire way to stop retaliatory redistricting in their home state, they could also call on GOPers in other states to stand down. As the governor’s office has noted, the new congressional maps would only take effect “if other states engage in mid-cycle partisan gerrymanders.”
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Republicans Try to Block Plan appeared first on New Republic.
