In a stinging setback for President Donald Trump and Republicans, a federal court on Tuesday blocked a newly drawn congressional map in Texas that would have given the party an edge in winning five more House seats.
In a 2-1 ruling, a judicial panel issued a temporary order stopping the new map from taking effect and found the state had to instead use the map it drew in 2021. The ruling, if it stands, will provide a major victory for Democrats because it is likely to allow them to hang on to five seats in next year’s midterm elections.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) appealed the decision to the Supreme Court late Tuesday.
Trump this summer pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to take the unusual step of redrawing its map in the middle of the decade instead of waiting until the next census is complete in five years. The effort kicked off a nationwide redistricting war that has seen Republicans and Democrats trying to carve up states they control ahead of the 2026 elections.
At the outset of the redistricting fight, Republicans had the upper hand because they control more statehouses and have to contend with fewer state laws that limit how lines can be drawn. But Tuesday’s ruling showed how unpredictable the battle can be.
Republicans have a 219-214 majority in Congress, and just a few races could determine which party controls the House after the midterm elections.
Texas Republicans said they drew the new lines to give themselves more seats, but the panel found the case involved “much more than just politics.”
“Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote for the panel.
The distinction between racial and political motivations is important legally. The Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot allow race to predominate when drawing lines but has given them free rein to use political calculations.
Brown was joined in the ruling by Senior District Judge David C. Guaderrama, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, was in dissent and will write a separate opinion later, according to Tuesday’s decision.
In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said claims that the map is racially discriminatory are absurd. “The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason,” he said.
Democrats praised the decision and chided Republicans for drawing lines that they said hurt voters.
“Legislatures shouldn’t be discriminating against voters, and I think that’s why everybody should be outraged by this map,” said U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas).
Like many redistricting cases, this one was heard by a special three-judge panel instead of a single judge. Appeals in such cases go directly to the Supreme Court instead of an appeals court. Time for further action in the case is running out because election officials, candidates and voters need to know where the lines are well before the state’s March primaries. The candidate filing deadline is Dec. 8, though courts could change when the paperwork is due.
Already, the Supreme Court is considering a case that could knock out a pillar of the Voting Rights Act and require states to draw race-blind districts, greatly reducing the number of majority Black and majority Latino districts that tend to vote for Democrats.
Texas was the first state to redraw its map this year at Trump’s behest. Within months, Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina did the same, and Ohio Republicans used a state requirement to redraw their map to improve their chances in two more districts. Trump is pressuring Republicans in other states to do the same, even as he faces GOP resistance in Indiana and Kansas.
In response to Texas’s move, Democrats in California persuaded voters to approve a map that would give them as many as five more districts. Virginia Democrats are working on a plan to give themselves more seats, and members of their party in other states could soon follow suit. Democrats also benefited from a recent court decision that is likely to give them a district in Utah.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats celebrated the ruling after months of fretting that Republicans would be able to draw more seats than they could. As Texas Democrats huddled on the House floor during votes, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-New Mexico) ran up to them, extended her arms as if she wanted to give them a hug and screamed “Yaaaaay!”
At the start of the year, Democrats weren’t planning to draw new maps. But when Texas pursued its plan, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called for a counteroffensive to offset the GOP gains. He urged voters to adopt a new map — even though they had voted 15 years earlier to adopt an independent process — arguing that it was the best way to fight Trump.
What was initially meant as a defensive measure now could help Democrats net more seats than Republicans.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom (D) wrote in a post on X after Tuesday’s ruling.
The White House did not comment on the ruling, but Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a social media post that she disagreed with the ruling. “Texas’s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons,” she said. “We look forward to Texas’s victory at the Supreme Court.”
Trump has been open about his focus on redistricting. Hours before the court issued its ruling, he posted a message on his Truth Social platform calling on Indiana Republicans to draw a new map. He warned Republicans who don’t fall in line that they would face primary opponents.
Tuesday’s ruling suggested Republicans may have made strategic errors in the initial stages of their push to redraw the Texas’s map. In calling for new maps, Abbott cited a letter from Trump’s Justice Department that alleged — incorrectly, according to Tuesday’s ruling — that the state’s 2021 map was unconstitutional because of the racial makeup of some districts.
That opened the door to the court’s findings. By invoking that concern as a reason to redraw the map, Abbott had “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” the opinion said.
As Texas officials prepared their appeal, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-California) on Tuesday renewed his call to ban states from adopting maps outside of the ordinary, once-a-decade schedule. Kiley’s district was tilted toward Democrats under the state’s new map, and he said in a statement that it’s time to “end this madness.”
“It is clearer than ever,” he said, “that there are no ‘winners’ in this foolish redistricting war.”
Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro and Kadia Goba contributed to this report.
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