Massive blow to GOP as federal judges strike down gerrymandered Texas maps

Texas’ plan to gerrymander its congressional map in favor of Republicans hit a massive snag on Tuesday as a federal panel of judges struck down the new district map on the grounds that they discriminated against minority groups.

The decision was handled down by a panel of three federal judges after a nine-day hearing last month in the case brought against the state of Texas voting rights advocates and minority voters. The judges — Obama, Reagan, and Trump appointees, respectively — found in favor of the plaintiffs arguments that the new map unlawfully gerrymanders based on minority communities.

As a result, the state will be required to continue using the congressional maps drawn back in 2021 and enjoined from using the new one passed into law over the summer. The fight is far from over, however, with Democracy Docket reporting that the ruling is highly likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which has been known to rule in favor of conservatives more often than not in recent years.

Congressional district maps are typically redrawn once a decade, based on new census data, to create districts that better reflect shifting demographics. Both parties have long been accused of redrawing state maps to better ensure they hang on to power, a process known as “gerrymandering.”

In defiance of this once-a-decade norm, the Texas state legislature passed new maps over the summer designed to create five new majority Republican districts in the state, thereby helping the party retain a majority in the House of Representatives. This came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who has called for as many GOP-controlled states as possible to do so in order to stop a potential Democratic majority in the 2026 midterms that could stunt his administration’s goals.

“When Texas tried to steal 5 seats, I said to watch the litigation my law firm had filed because we had a good chance of winning in court,” Marc Elias, founder of the voting rights focused Elias Law Group, wrote in a post to BlueSky following the ruling. “Today a federal court BLOCKED THE MAP.”

California’s recent Proposition 50 was drafted in response to this move from Texas, allowing the Golden State to alter its redistricting rules and redraw its map to create enough Democratic majority districts to counteract Texas. The measure was overwhelmingly approved by voters in the state, though it does feature a provision that will nullify itself if Texas’s gerrymander is definitively blocked.