{"id":388638,"date":"2025-11-18T23:34:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T23:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388638\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T23:34:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T23:34:15","slug":"judges-block-texas-from-using-new-us-house-map-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/388638\/","title":{"rendered":"Judges block Texas from using new US House map in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas from using a redrawn U.S. House map<\/a> that touched off a nationwide redistricting battle and is a major piece of President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority ahead of the 2026 elections.<\/p>\n

The ruling is a blow to Trump\u2019s rush to create a more favorable political landscape for Republicans in next year\u2019s midterms, at least for now. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed a swift appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and defended the map that was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats.<\/p>\n

But in a 2-1 ruling, a panel of federal judges in El Paso sided with opponents who argued that Texas\u2019 unusual summer redrawing of congressional districts would harm Black and Hispanic residents. The decision was authored by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, who was nominated to the bench by Trump during his first term.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public perception of this case is that it\u2019s 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,\u201d the ruling states.<\/p>\n

The decision comes amid an widening national battle<\/a> over redistricting. Missouri<\/a> and North Carolina<\/a> followed Texas with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. <\/p>\n

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To counter those moves, California voters approved<\/a> a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there. The Trump administration has filed a federal lawsuit<\/a> hoping to block that map, with Attorney General Pam Bondi calling it \u201ca brazen power grab\u201d and an effort to \u201centrench one-party rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a post on X, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the Texas ruling: \u201cDonald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned \u2014 and democracy won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans insist they had only partisan motives<\/p>\n

Republicans in Texas insisted that they drew the new map only for partisan advantage. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019<\/a> that partisan gerrymandering is a political question and not one for the federal courts to decide. <\/p>\n

\u201cTexas\u2019s map was drawn the right way for the right reasons,\u201d Bondi posted on X. \u201cWe look forward to Texas\u2019s victory at the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

A coalition of civil rights groups representing Black and Hispanic voters argued the map reduced the influence of minority voters, making it a racial gerrymander that violates the federal Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. They sought an order<\/a> blocking Texas from using the map while their case proceeded, which the judges granted.<\/p>\n

If the ruling stands, Texas will be forced to use the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 for next year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s decision is a critical victory for voting rights and a powerful rebuke of Texas\u2019s brazen attempt to dilute the political power of Latino and Black voters,\u201d said Abha Khanna, a partner in the Elias Law Group, a Democratic firm representing minority voters in the fight over the new Texas map. <\/p>\n

Judges say the Trump administration signaled race-based motives<\/p>\n

The panel of judges signalled that they think the map\u2019s critics have a substantial chance of winning their case at trial. An appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama joined Brown in the majority, while an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan dissented.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout 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,\u201d the ruling said. <\/p>\n

The two appeals judges concluded that a major reason that Abbott and Republican lawmakers moved was a letter from the head of the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s Civil Rights Division in July, directing Texas to redraw four districts that it said violated the Voting Rights Act. <\/p>\n

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant U.S. attorney general overseeing the division, cited a ruling last year by the conservative federal appeals court for Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. <\/p>\n

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 does not allow separate minority groups to \u201caggregate their populations\u201d to argue that a map illegally dilutes minority voters\u2019 ability to elect the candidate of their choice. The court said each group\u2019s situation must be analyzed separately. <\/p>\n

Dhillon\u2019s letter to Texas officials dealt with four so-called \u201ccoalition\u201d districts, one in the Dallas area and three in the Houston area, where no group has a majority but minority voters together outnumber non-Hispanic white voters. Dhillon argued that those districts must be dismantled as \u201cvestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judges said Dhillon\u2019s conclusion was \u201clegally incorrect,\u201d but, added, \u201cThe Legislature adopted those racial objectives.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe redistricting bill\u2019s sponsors made numerous statements suggesting that they had intentionally manipulated the districts\u2019 lines to create more majority-Hispanic and majority-Black districts,\u201d the ruling said. <\/p>\n

GOP map eliminated minority coalition districts <\/p>\n

Republicans hold 25 of Texas\u2019 38 congressional seats, with Democrats holding two of their 13 seats in districts that Trump carried in 2024. Had the new map been in place last year, Trump would have carried 30 congressional districts by 10 percentage points or more, making it likely that the GOP would have won that many seats as well.<\/p>\n

The new map decreased from 16 to 14 the number of congressional districts where minorities comprise a majority of voting-age citizens.<\/p>\n

Texas eliminated five of the state\u2019s nine coalition districts. Five of the six Democratic lawmakers drawn into districts with other incumbents are Black or Hispanic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite obvious that Texas\u2019s effort to redistrict mid-decade, before next year\u2019s midterm elections, is racially motivated,\u201d said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, which was among the parties suing Texas over redistricting. \u201cThe state\u2019s intent here is to reduce the members of Congress who represent Black communities, and that, in and of itself, is unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans argued that the map is better for minority voters. While five \u201ccoalition\u201d districts are eliminated, there\u2019s a new, eighth Hispanic-majority district, and two new Black-majority districts.<\/p>\n

Critics consider each of those new districts a sham, arguing that the majority is so slim that white voters, who tend to turn out in larger numbers, will control election results.<\/p>\n

But in a statement Tuesday, Abbott said: \u201cThe Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans\u2019 conservative voting preferences \u2013 and for no other reason.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAny claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press journalists Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; Adriana Gomez in Pembroke Park, Florida, and Mark Sherman in Washington, contributed to this story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas from using a redrawn U.S. House map that touched off a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":388639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[185237,3881,11744,20148,356,101122,69,90,1854,57,5026,19124,27383,185238,362,181121,50,11335,80,2068,22204,15119,369,358,13210,5028,61,322,67,326,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-388638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-abha-khanna","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-barack-obama","12":"tag-black-experience","13":"tag-courts","14":"tag-derrick-johnson","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-elections","17":"tag-gavin-newsom","18":"tag-general-news","19":"tag-greg-abbott","20":"tag-harmeet-dhillon","21":"tag-hispanics","22":"tag-jeffrey-v-brown","23":"tag-legal-proceedings","24":"tag-local-news-for-apple","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-pam-bondi","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-race-and-ethnicity","29":"tag-redistricting","30":"tag-ronald-reagan","31":"tag-supreme-court-of-the-united-states","32":"tag-texas","33":"tag-trump-lawsuits","34":"tag-tx-state-wire","35":"tag-u-s-news","36":"tag-u-s-republican-party","37":"tag-united-states","38":"tag-united-states-house-of-representatives","39":"tag-unitedstates","40":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}