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| Greg Abbott should have fell on his head instead of his back. |
A federal judge in emergency hearing in regards to the map ruled in favor of plantiffa who claimed the maps held an unfair advantage to minorities and the voters who elected them. The Federal judge appointed by President Donald J. Trump in his first term put a permanent hold on the map.
The federal judge said that Texas Republicans went against its own decision in 2021.
The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling striking down the new lines. “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 ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that his office would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the ruling and allow the map to go into effect. But time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.
The map cleared the GOP-controlled Legislature in August and was quickly signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. Several advocacy groups sued over the new district lines, saying lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans and drew racially gerrymandered maps. Over the course of a nine-day hearing in El Paso last month, they aimed to convince the judges that it was in voters’ best interest to shelve the new map until a full trial could be held.
“A federal court just stopped one of the most brazen attempts to steal our democracy that Texas has ever seen,” Texas House Minority Leader Gene Wu, D-Houston, said in a statement. “Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies tried to silence Texans’ voices to placate Donald Trump, but now have delivered him absolutely nothing.”
It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s 2-1 decision came from a three-judge panel that included Brown — a former Texas Supreme Court justice who once clerked for Abbott — and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, a Barack Obama appointee. Judge Jerry Smith, who was appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Ronald Reagan, cast a dissenting vote and was expected to soon issue his own opinion.
But for Trump, and many of his Republican supporters in Texas, the short-term goal of having this map for the 2026 election was as important as the long game.
“I’m convinced that if Texas does not take this action, there is an extreme risk that [the] Republican majority will be lost,” Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the floor of the state Senate before the new map passed. “If it does, the next two years after the midterm, there will be nothing but inquisitions and impeachments and humiliation for our country.”
The state had argued that the entire redistricting process was based on a partisan goal, which the U.S. Supreme Court has previously said courts cannot intervene to prevent. But the plaintiffs pointed to a letter sent from the U.S. Department of Justice directing Texas to redraw its maps to eradicate four majority non-white districts, arguing that was the original sin that cast a racially discriminatory pall over the whole process.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Brown said it was difficult to analyze the DOJ letter because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.” But the fact that state leaders had pointed to that letter repeatedly as the impetus for redistricting was enough, the judges said.
“The Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to draw a new U.S. House map to resolve DOJ’s concerns. In other words, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race,” Brown wrote on behalf of the judges. “In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.”
Abbott said in a statement that it was “absurd” to say the maps were drawn with discriminatory intent.
“The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences – and for no other reason,” he said. “This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
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| Texas will try to defy the federal court decision. |
Chad Dunn, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said he felt the state would have limited success at the high court.
“Everyone involved said they were drawing the lines on the basis of race,” he said. “I don’t see how the Supreme Court sets that aside.”
California voters pass Proposition 50 which allows the state legislature temporarily bypass the independent redistricting committee in drawing up congressional maps if another state produces a unfair map.
Tuesday’s ruling comes two weeks after California voters greenlit the state’s retaliatory map that aimed to offset Texas’ GOP gains by carving out five new Democratic congressional districts in the Golden State. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who spearheaded the plan, traveled to Houston earlier this month for a victory lap to celebrate his state’s passage of Proposition 50, which cleared the way for the California Legislature to approve new congressional boundaries.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Newsom said in a statement Tuesday. “This ruling is a win for Texas and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
Missouri, Indiana, New York, Ohio and Florida are pushing for unfair maps.
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