WASHINGTON — A federal court has blocked Texas from moving forward with a new congressional map hastily drawn in recent months to net Republicans up to five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.
The ruling on Tuesday is a major political blow to the Trump administration, which set off a redistricting arms race throughout the country earlier this year by encouraging Texas lawmakers to redraw its congressional district boundaries mid-decade — an extraordinary move bucking traditional practice.
The three-judge federal court panel in El Paso said in a 2-1 decision that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” ordering the state to revert to the maps it had drawn in 2021.
Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who at Trump’s behest directed GOP state lawmakers to proceed with the plan, vowed on Tuesday that the state would appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.
Californians responded to Texas’ attempted move by voting on Nov. 4 to approve a new, temporary congressional map for the state, giving Democrats the opportunity to pick up five new seats.
Initially, the proposal pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, known as Prop. 50, had trigger language that would have conditioned new California maps going into effect based on whether Texas approved its new congressional districts.
But that language was stripped out last minute, raising the possibility that Democrats enter the 2026 midterm election with a distinct advantage. The language was removed because Texas had already passed its redistricting plan, making the trigger no longer needed, said Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, who drew the maps for Prop. 50.
“Our legislature eliminated the trigger because Texas had already triggered it,” Mitchell said Tuesday.
Newsom celebrated the ruling in a statement to The Times, which he also posted on the social media site X.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
Legal scholars had warned that Texas’ bid would invite accusations and legal challenges of racial gerrymandering that California’s maps would not.
The new Texas redistricting plan appears to have been instigated by a letter from Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who threatened Texas with legal action over three “coalition districts” that she argued were unconstitutional.
Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority. The newly configured districts passed by Texas redrew all three, potentially “cracking” racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said.
While the Supreme Court’s rulings on redistricting have been sporadic, the justices have generally ruled that purely political redistricting is legal, but that racial gerrymandering is not — a more difficult line to draw in southern states where racial and political lines overlap.
In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district.
The Justice Department is also suing California to attempt to block the use of its new maps in next year’s elections.
Times staff writer Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
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