{"id":19126,"date":"2025-10-24T11:18:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/19126\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:18:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:18:25","slug":"racial-gerrymandering-claims-give-new-texas-map-its-first-court-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/19126\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial gerrymandering claims give new Texas map its first court test"},"content":{"rendered":"

A panel of federal judges began considering Wednesday whether Texas can use a redrawn congressional map<\/a> that boosts Republicans and launched an expanding redistricting battle ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The case in an El Paso courtroom is the first test of Texas\u2019 new map. Republican state lawmakers quickly redrew the lines this summer to give the GOP five more seats at the urging of President Donald Trump in an effort to preserve the slim Republican U.S. House majority.<\/p>\n

Civil rights groups and dozens of Black and Hispanic voters are challenging the changes, saying the new map intentionally reduces minority voters\u2019 influence. They argue that the new district lines represent racial gerrymandering<\/a> prohibited by the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

Texas Republican lawmakers and state leaders deny these claims, saying the map is a legal partisan gerrymander.<\/p>\n

The hearing is expected to last more than a week. It is unclear how quickly the judges will issue a ruling.<\/p>\n

The new map eliminated five of the state\u2019s nine \u201ccoalition\u201d districts, where no minority group has a majority but together they outnumber non-Hispanic white voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cRace and party have folded onto each other,\u201d said Keith Gaddie, a Texas Christian University political science professor who has testified as an expert witness in redistricting cases over the past 25 years. \u201cWhat could be seen as being racial gerrymandering could just be partisan gerrymandering.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019<\/a> that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit partisan gerrymandering.<\/p>\n

Texas says critics cloak partisan fears in rhetoric about race<\/p>\n

The new Texas map is designed to give Republicans 30 of the state\u2019s 38 House seats, up from 25 now.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s attorneys argue that Texas officials\u2019 persistent statements about their partisan motives show they weren\u2019t engaged in illegal racial gerrymandering but were in a \u201cpolitical arms-race,\u201d Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s office said in a recent court filing.<\/p>\n

The move in Texas has subsequently led some other states \u2014 Republican-led as well as those led by Democrats \u2014 to respond with some redistricting plans of their own<\/a> in a scramble to try to dominate the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

California countered<\/a> by putting a proposed map on the ballot in November to pick up five Democratic seats. Missouri redrew its lines<\/a> last month to give the GOP an extra seat.<\/p>\n

In court filings, Paxton\u2019s office argued that Republicans are offsetting past Democratic gerrymanders, and the Texas map\u2019s critics \u201cseek to use race as a foil to kneecap Texas\u2019s efforts to even the playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever they do not get what they want, they cry racism,\u201d its filing said.<\/p>\n

Making a case involves detailed election analysis<\/p>\n

The case will be heard by a panel of three judges, one each appointed by Trump, and Presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for groups and voters challenging the map aim to show that a trial is likely to prove the new lines deny minority voters opportunities to elect candidates of their choosing.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates have to follow rules when they redistrict,\u201d said Nina Perales, an attorney representing some the voters and groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens. \u201cThey provide essentially the buffer guards to protect the democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judges are likely to hear a detailed analysis of voting patterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minority community has to be what\u2019s called politically cohesive, which tends to mean that members of that community overwhelmingly tend to prefer the same candidates in elections,\u201d said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University.<\/p>\n

Critics see new, \u2018sham\u2019 minority districts<\/p>\n

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

Republicans argue 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 \u201csham,\u201d arguing that the majority is so slim that white voters, who tend to turn out in larger percentages, will control election results.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is growing animus against African-American and other communities who have historically been disenfranchised,\u201d said Derrick Johnson, the NAACP\u2019s national president. \u201cThis is consistent with the current climate and culture germinating from the White House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics also argued that the 2021 map itself didn\u2019t have enough minority districts. For example, Perales said, Houston has enough Hispanic voters for two such districts, and the new map has one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A panel of federal judges began considering Wednesday whether Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that boosts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7536,14635,2919,815,14638,145,288,490,14639,2918,1967,14640,287,14637,2830,14636,27,29,28,1760,1499,9931],"class_list":["post-19126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-barack-obama","tag-black-experience","tag-civil-rights","tag-courts","tag-derrick-johnson","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-hispanics","tag-human-rights","tag-ken-paxton","tag-nina-perales","tag-politics","tag-race-and-ethnicity","tag-redistricting","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news","tag-u-s-republican-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}