EL PASO – A panel of federal judges has blocked Texas’ new congressional map, saying it appeared to be an attempt at race-based gerrymandering.
In the 2-1 ruling November 18, the judges said the state needed to use district boundaries drawn by legislators in 2021. The new map made five districts more favorable to Republican voting, and the judges said the map had been draw at the urging of the Trump administration.
Republicans will be appealing the decision.
“The map ultimately passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor — the 2025 Map — achieved all but one of the racial objectives that DOJ demanded,” wrote U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Galveston-based judge who was appointed to the federal court by Trump. “Reverting to the 2021 map is also more proper than giving the Legislature an opportunity to redraw the map before issuing an injunction, as the state defendants ask the court to do.”
Democratic and minority groups filed the legal challenge to the redrawn Texas map.
“Without an injunction, the racial minorities the plaintiff groups represent will be forced to be represented in Congress based on likely unconstitutional racial classifications for at least two years,” Brown wrote. “The plaintiff groups’ constitutional right to participate in free and fair elections is not outweighed by minor inconveniences to the state’s election administrators and to candidates nor by any residual voter confusion, which would be marginal at best given the short timeframe since the 2025 Map was passed.”
Joining Brown in the majority was U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, who was appointed by President Obama, from El Paso. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith, a Houston-based appointee of President Reagan, dissented. Smith has not issued a dissenting opinion.
The majority said the Department of Justice goaded Texas into attacking four districts with non-white majorities. Brown said a July 7 letter from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was “challenging to unpack” because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.”
“Earlier this year, President Trump began urging Texas to redraw its U.S. House map to create five additional Republican seats,” Brown wrote. “But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board. …
“In doing so, 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. …
“A racial-gerrymandering claim alleges that the ‘state, without sufficient justification,’ has ‘separat[ed] its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race.’ The plaintiff ‘must prove that the State subordinated race-neutral districting criteria ... to racial considerations,’ such that race was ‘the predominant factor motivating the legislature’s decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district.’”
Gov. Greg Abbott criticized the ruling.
“Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings,” Abbott said in a press release. “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.
“The State of Texas will swiftly appeal to the United States Supreme Court.”
Missouri and North Carolina also have passed maps that likely would add a Republican each. And California’s Proposition 50 countered Texas’ five GOP swing with five Democratic seats. Democrats also have filed legal challenges in North Carolina and Missouri.
Ohio, which was legally required to redraw its map this year, saw a deal that could turn two Democratic seats over to the GOP, but Democrats say both districts will be competitive for the 2026 election.
Indiana lawmakers have been asked to draw a new map that would give the GOP two more districts, but state Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray has refused to do so.
