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In November 2025, a three-judge federal panel blocked Texas from using a new congressional map for the 2026 midterms. The court issued a preliminary injunction in League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Abbott. The map was drawn at President Donald Trump’s urging to help Republicans gain House seats.
The court found the state likely engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The decision rejects the idea that states can redistrict whenever they want for partisan gain instead of following the Census schedule every ten years.
The decision affects more than Texas, reaching Democratic leadership in California, legislatures in Indiana and North Carolina, and the highest levels of the Department of Justice.
Why Texas Redrew Its Map Mid-Decade
Congressional district boundaries are typically redrawn once every ten years following the Census, as mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. This cycle provides a decade of stability for voters and incumbents. However, federal law doesn’t explicitly prohibit more frequent redistricting, provided new maps meet constitutional requirements and the Voting Rights Act.
Mid-decade redistricting isn’t unprecedented in Texas. The state became the epicenter of this practice in 2003, when Republicans gained full control of the legislature and redrew maps to dismantle the Democratic gerrymander of the 1990s.
The 2025 effort was different. It wasn’t just a state initiative but a directive from the federal Executive Branch.
Trump’s Social Media Posts on Redistricting
Facing the historical probability that the President’s party loses seats during midterms, President Trump sought to engineer a structural advantage. He publicly articulated a strategy to expand the Republican House majority by using GOP control of state legislatures to redraw favorable maps.
Trump used Truth Social to publicly pressure state officials. He argued Republicans were “entitled” to five additional seats in Texas and further gains in other red states.
In Indiana, where state senators hesitated to reopen their maps, Trump posted on November 16, 2025: “Senators Bray, Goode, and the others… should DO THEIR JOB, AND DO IT NOW! If not, let’s get them out of office, ASAP.”
Following Trump’s post targeting Indiana State Senator Greg Goode, the senator’s home was “swatted” on November 17, 2025, a criminal harassment tactic involving false emergency reports to draw armed police response.
The Justice Department Letter
A significant legal issue of the 2025 redistricting push was the role of the U.S. Department of Justice. In July 2025, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott alleging the state’s existing 2021 congressional map contained “vestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past” and violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Governor Abbott cited this letter as the primary justification for convening a special legislative session. He claimed the state was compelled to ensure compliance with federal law. However, in doing so, the Governor and legislative leaders explicitly linked the redraw to racial considerations rather than purely partisan ones.
This created a legal paradox the federal court would later exploit. By claiming the redraw was necessary to “fix” racial issues identified by the DOJ, the state effectively admitted race was the “predominant factor” in their decision-making. The court later noted, “the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race.”
This admission stripped the state of the “partisan gerrymander” defense, which is non-justiciable in federal court, and placed the map squarely under the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition on racial gerrymandering.
The Legislative Battle
The passage of PlanC2333 strained the norms of the Texas Legislature.
The Democratic Walkout
Democratic lawmakers, recognizing they lacked votes to stop the map, resorted to procedural warfare. Democrats in the Texas House broke quorum, fleeing the state for over two weeks to deny the legislature the minimum members required to conduct business.
Republican leadership took strong action. House Speaker Dustin Burrows ordered state police to accompany Democrats any time they left the chamber once they returned. Leadership threatened arrest of absent members to compel attendance. The standoff paralyzed state government for weeks but ultimately ended when enough Democrats returned to Austin, vowing to fight the map in court.
Passage on Party Lines
On August 20, 2025, the Texas House passed the new map on a strict party-line vote of 88-52. The Senate followed on August 23 with an 18-8 vote, and Governor Abbott signed the map into law on August 29, 2025.
President Trump celebrated immediately on Truth Social: “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!! Everything Passed, on our way to FIVE more Congressional seats and saving your Rights, your Freedoms, and your Country, itself.”
This explicit confirmation of the map’s partisan intent, gaining five seats, would stand in stark contrast to the state’s courtroom arguments that the map was drawn for Voting Rights Act compliance.
How the Map Was Gerrymandered
To flip five Democratic seats while maintaining a façade of VRA compliance, mapmakers engaged in targeted cracking and packing of minority communities.
Eliminating Coalition Districts
The new map reduced districts where minorities comprise a majority of voting-age citizens from 16 to 14. More specifically, it eliminated five of nine existing coalition districts.
Coalition districts are where no single minority group forms a majority, but Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters together constitute a majority of voting-age population and historically vote together to elect their candidate of choice.
This reduction occurred despite massive growth of the state’s non-white population, a demographic reality that typically necessitates creating, not destroying, minority-opportunity districts.
The “Sham” District Strategy
To counter accusations of dilution, Republican mapmakers argued PlanC2333 actually created new minority districts, pointing to a new eighth Hispanic-majority district and two new Black-majority districts.
The court and plaintiffs identified these as “sham” districts, jurisdictions crafted to look compliant on a spreadsheet while ensuring white control at the ballot box.
The mechanism relies on the disparity between Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) and voter turnout. Mapmakers would draw a district with a Hispanic CVAP of roughly 50.3%, a razor-thin majority. Because white voters in Texas historically turn out at significantly higher rates than Hispanic voters, a district with a bare 50% Hispanic population effectively functions as a white-majority district on Election Day.
District 18 in Houston
A notable change was eliminating Congressional District 18 in Houston. Historically held by the late civil rights icon Sheila Jackson Lee, District 18 was a bedrock of Black political power in Texas.
The new map merged District 18 into District 9, represented by Democrat Al Green. This pitted two historic Black constituencies against one another in a single district.
The remnants were combined with Liberty County, a rural, majority-white area. This addition diluted the Black and Hispanic voting strength of the new district. Al Green, vowing to run “wherever my house is,” faced the prospect of running in a district radically altered to include deep-red rural voters.
District 35: Austin to San Antonio
District 35, represented by progressive Democrat Greg Casar, was designed under the 2021 map to connect Hispanic communities in Austin and San Antonio along the I-35 corridor. PlanC2333 targeted this district for obliteration.
The map removed the San Antonio base and replaced it with rural counties to the north. In Austin, neighborhoods were sliced with extreme precision. Ramon Telles, a resident of the Rattan Creek neighborhood, found his community tri-sected into Districts 10, 11, and 17, districts stretching hundreds of miles to the Louisiana border and West Texas.
By cracking the urban core of Austin and submerging its voters into vast rural districts, the map effectively eliminated Casar’s base, rendering the district a “sham” Hispanic opportunity district that would likely elect a Republican.
South Texas Targets
The map also sought Republican gains in the Rio Grande Valley, a region showing shifting political allegiances.
The map removed heavily Hispanic portions of Hidalgo County from District 34 and replaced them with high-turnout white populations from the Corpus Christi area. This was designed to flip seats held by Democrats like Henry Cuellar (District 28) and the seat formerly held by Vicente Gonzalez (District 34).
| District | Current Incumbent | Status in 2021 Map | Change in PlanC2333 | Primary Method of Dilution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CD 18 | Vacant (Formerly S. Jackson Lee) | Black Opportunity | Eliminated | Merged into CD 9; “Packed” Black voters |
| CD 9 | Al Green (D) | Coalition/Black | Diluted | Added rural/white Liberty County; reduced minority CVAP to ~50% |
| CD 35 | Greg Casar (D) | Hispanic Opportunity | Dismantled | San Antonio base removed; Austin neighborhoods “cracked” into rural districts |
| CD 37 | Lloyd Doggett (D) | Safe Democrat | Packed/Cracked | Used to absorb displaced Democrats or cracked to dilute Austin influence |
| CD 28 | Henry Cuellar (D) | Hispanic Opportunity | Competitive → GOP | Addition of high-turnout white populations from Corpus Christi region |
California’s Retaliation
The Texas redistricting triggered immediate retaliation from Democratic-controlled states, most notably California.
Proposition 50
In response to the Texas special session, California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature placed Proposition 50 on the November ballot. This measure proposed a temporary override of the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, allowing the Democratic-controlled legislature to draw a new map for the 2026 election.
The explicit goal was to counteract Republican gains in Texas. By redrawing California’s map, Democrats estimated they could gain five seats, effectively neutralizing the five-seat gain Republicans sought in Texas.
Initially, the legislation included “trigger language” stating the new California map would only take effect if Texas proceeded with its mid-decade redraw. However, the California Legislature removed this language before the measure went to voters.
This removal means Proposition 50 is not contingent on the survival of the Texas map. Even though the Texas map has been blocked by courts, the California map, passed by voters on November 4, 2025, remains valid law.
The Backfire Scenario
The removal of trigger language created a potential nightmare for the Republican Party. If the court’s blockade of the Texas map is upheld, Republicans gain zero new seats in Texas. Meanwhile, because Proposition 50 passed and is active, Democrats stand to gain five seats in California.
Following the Texas ruling, Governor Newsom posted on X: “Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned, and democracy won.”
Despite lower voter turnout compared to presidential years, Proposition 50 passed with approximately 64.6% of the vote, driven by high engagement among young voters and Latinos who returned to Democratic coalition levels. An independent analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California confirmed the Prop 50 map maintains 16 majority-Latino districts, refuting Republican claims that the map dilutes minority power.
National Domino Effect
Beyond California, the Texas move spurred a wave of mid-decade redistricting:
North Carolina and Missouri both passed new maps to add one GOP seat each.
Despite Trump’s pressure and the “swatting” of Senator Goode, the Indiana Senate resisted a full redraw, voting down the proposal in a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.
A court-ordered redistricting in Utah could result in a Democratic gain, further complicating the national math.
The Court Decision
The legal challenge unfolded in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, El Paso Division. The panel was composed of Judge Jeffrey V. Brown (appointed by Donald Trump), Judge David Guaderrama (appointed by Barack Obama), and Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith (appointed by Ronald Reagan).
A Trump Appointee’s Rebuke
On November 18, 2025, the court issued a 2-1 decision granting a preliminary injunction against PlanC2333. The opinion was authored by Judge Jeffrey Brown, a fact that shocked Texas Republicans who expected a Trump appointee to uphold the Trump-requested map.
The court ruled plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Judge Brown’s opinion explicitly rejected the state’s defense that the map was merely partisan.
“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.”
The Racial Predominance Finding
Under Supreme Court precedents like Miller v. Johnson, a map is unconstitutional if race was the “predominant factor” in its drawing. The court found that Governor Abbott’s reliance on the DOJ letter, and his explicit direction to the legislature to “redistrict based on race” to fix alleged VRA violations, was a fatal admission.
The state couldn’t claim to be race-blind when they convened the session specifically to address racial composition.
Rejecting the “Too Close to Election” Argument
Texas argued the court shouldn’t intervene due to the Purcell principle, which counsels courts against changing election rules close to an election. The panel rejected this.
The court noted the legislature chose to redraw the map “weeks before precinct-chair and candidate-filing periods opened.” The court refused to allow the state to create an emergency and then use that emergency to evade review.
With the primary in March 2026 and the filing deadline on December 8, 2025, the court determined there was enough time to revert to the 2021 map.
The Dissent
Judge Jerry E. Smith’s 104-page dissent included unusually personal criticism and repeated references to political donors.
“Pernicious Judicial Misbehavior”
Judge Smith accused his colleagues of “pernicious judicial misbehavior” for issuing their opinion before he completed his dissent. He claimed he received a 160-page draft with only a few days to respond, calling it “the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered” in his 37 years on the bench.
Invoking George Soros 17 Times
Judge Smith invoked the name of Democratic donor George Soros 17 times throughout his dissent.
He accused the majority of doing the bidding of “George Soros and Gavin Newsom,” stating these figures were the “main winners” of the opinion. Smith specifically attacked legal organizations representing the plaintiffs, such as the Elias Law Group and the Campaign Legal Center, labeling them as “Soros-funded” entities and implying their arguments were illegitimate due to their funding sources.
He characterized Judge Brown’s opinion as a “prime candidate” for a “Nobel Prize for fiction” and an “unskilled magician’s” trick.
This dissent highlights extreme polarization within the federal judiciary. Smith’s argument, that the map was a standard partisan gerrymander and thus protected by Supreme Court precedent, was overshadowed by the vitriol of his delivery.
Election Administration Chaos
The ruling created significant challenges for Texas election administration. With the candidate filing deadline set for December 8, 2025, the reversion to the 2021 map presented a logistical nightmare.
In large counties like Harris and Travis, election officials had spent months re-coding voters into the new 2025 precincts. They must now undo this work in days to ensure voters receive correct ballots for the March primaries. Travis County voter registration director Chris Davis noted the directive from the Secretary of State to operate under the 2021 maps, but emphasized “whatever ultimately happens, it’s going to have to be done quickly.”
Incumbents and challengers are in limbo. Candidates who declared for districts under the 2025 lines may now find themselves living outside the districts they intended to represent. Conversely, Democrats like Al Green and Greg Casar have seen their political bases theoretically restored, pending the Supreme Court’s decision.
What Happens Next
The preliminary injunction isn’t the final word. The battle now shifts to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the timeline is compressed and the stakes are existential for the GOP majority.
Emergency Appeal to Supreme Court
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately announced an appeal. The state will file an application for an emergency stay with Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees the Fifth Circuit.
The decision will be made via the “shadow docket,” likely within days. If Alito and the conservative majority grant the stay, the 2025 map (PlanC2333) will be used for the 2026 election, likely securing the 5-seat GOP gain. If they deny the stay, the 2021 map remains, and Republicans gain zero seats in Texas while potentially losing five in California.
The Louisiana Case
Complicating the legal landscape is the pending Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais. This case challenges the constitutionality of creating majority-Black districts to satisfy the Voting Rights Act.
A ruling in Callais, expected in early 2026, could fundamentally weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Judge Smith’s dissent explicitly argued the majority was “reckless” to rule before Callais was decided, suggesting the Supreme Court might soon render the majority’s legal theory obsolete.
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