Court blocks use of GOP-redrawn Texas congressional map

WASHINGTON — A panel of federal judges on Tuesday blocked Texas from using its new congressional map in next year’s midterm elections, saying the new lines were likely unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

The 2-1 opinion from Judge Jeffrey V. Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, joined by Judge David C. Guaderrama of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, directed the state to use the first map it adopted in 2021 after the 2020 census.

Brown wrote in the opinion that the state this year likely used race to draw the lines of four of the five most changed congressional districts in the new map. The Texas Legislature targeted five Democrat-held seats and kicked off a wave of tit-for-tat redistricting efforts nationwide.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. 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,” Brown wrote.

The opinion noted that Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the third member of the three-judge panel, would file a separate dissent. The case may soon move quickly to the Supreme Court ahead of the state’s March primary since the map’s challengers used a legal process that means an appeal goes directly to the justices.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news release that the map was redrawn “to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences” and the state will swiftly appeal the ruling that imposes a different map “by judicial edict.”

“Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings,” Abbott said.

Ongoing VRA lawsuit

The state Legislature passed the new map in August. Litigants in an ongoing lawsuit alleging Voting Rights Act violations by the state in the first map that legislators drew after the 2020 census added the second map to the lawsuit.

The three-judge panel held a hearing on the map challengers’ arguments last month, which led to Tuesday’s ruling. In the decision, Brown noted that legislators drew the map targeting numerous majority-minority districts, and in the end created several majority-Hispanic districts, as part of the redistricting process.

While cloaking the redistricting in terms of addressing concerns about the racial makeup of districts was an “easier sell than a purely partisan one,” Brown wrote that legislators ran afoul of the Constitution.

Brown pointed to a July letter from the Justice Department, which contended that several of the state’s congressional districts known as coalition districts, which had a majority of nonwhite voters but no majority of other racial group, may violate the Voting Rights Act.

The judge wrote that the DOJ claims that coalition districts violated the VRA were “clearly wrong” and pointed out that the Trump administration made incorrect claims about some of the districts in the letter. That included calling one district a coalition district when it was instead majority Hispanic.

After that letter, Abbott added redistricting to the special session agenda, with instructions to address the districts laid out in the DOJ letter, as well as create more Hispanic-majority districts.

“In other words, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” the ruling stated.

The judge also noted that the Legislature did not target majority-white congressional districts held by Democrats, which would have made sense if legislators were acting for partisan reasons.

“The letter instead commands Texas to change four districts for one reason and one reason alone: the racial demographics of the voters who live there,” Brown wrote.

Brown pointed to statements by Abbott and legislators that said they intended to target coalition seats and were pursuing specific racial makeup thresholds in the new districts — a violation of the Constitution.

Districts targeted

The state did mid-decade redistricting this summer at the behest of the Trump administration.

Under the redrawn congressional map, the South Texas seats of Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez were made more Republican. Under the 2024 lines, Trump carried both the 28th and 34th districts, but his margins shifted to double digits under the redrawn map, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

A Houston-area district represented by Democrat Al Green shifted from a deep-blue seat to one that Trump would have carried by 20 points last year, according to Inside Elections. Green has since said he will run for the neighboring 18th District next year.

A safe Democratic district in the Dallas area represented by Rep. Julie Elizabeth Johnson was stretched further east under the redrawn lines, transforming into a seat Trump would have carried by 18 points, according to Inside Elections.

And the GOP-drawn map cut out Democratic Rep. Greg Casar’s political base in Austin from the 35th District, resulting in a new seat that Trump would have carried by 10 points, according to Inside Elections.

Casar has since announced that he will run for the Austin-anchored seat held by fellow Democrat Lloyd Doggett, who’s said he won’t seek reelection if courts uphold the new map.

Mid-decade redistricting efforts in several other states have shaken up the midterm battleground for next year’s elections. After Texas’ move, the Republican-led legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina followed suit with maps that could yield the GOP an extra seat from each state. And Ohio’s redistricting commission last month approved new boundaries that could help Republicans flip at least two seats.

Efforts in GOP-controlled Indiana to redraw their congressional map, though, appear stalled for now. Democrats have sought to keep pace. Voters in California earlier this month approved via a ballot measure a new map that gives Democrats up to five pickup opportunities.

A judge in Utah last week picked a new map that creates a new Solid Democratic seat in the Salt Lake City area. And Democrats in Maryland and Virginia are also exploring ways to redraw their congressional maps.