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 panel of three federal judges in El Paso, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with civil rights groups that had sued to invalidate the map, which was part of Texas’s aggressive mid-decade push to draw new congressional boundaries at Mr. Trump’s behest.
“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 use of the map drawn this summer.
Civil rights leaders who brought the suit celebrated the decision on Tuesday.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for Black voters and other communities of color in Texas,” said Robert Weiner, the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He added: “It is a clear violation of the Constitution to design a plan to purposefully dismantle districts where Black and Brown voters together are a majority of voters. That’s discrimination by design and that is illegal.”
The decision by the court is the latest setback to the president’s attempt to tilt more states’ congressional maps in Republicans’ favor before the 2026 midterms. Last week, Republicans in Indiana announced that they would not be taking up the president’s request to redraw the state’s map, drawing blowback from Mr. Trump on social media over the weekend.
But the decision from the federal court in Texas also signals that litigation could be a bulwark against efforts to redraw congressional maps by both Republicans and Democrats ahead of the midterms.
This article will be updated.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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