{"id":55823,"date":"2025-11-19T06:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/55823\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T06:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:54:13","slug":"federal-judges-block-texas-new-us-house-map-in-2026-midterms-citing-racial-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/55823\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judges block Texas’ new US House map in 2026 midterms, citing racial discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas cannot use\u00a0a new congressional map<\/a> drawn\u00a0by Republicans in hopes of securing the party additional U.S. House seats, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The ruling was a blow to President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s efforts to have GOP lawmakers in multiple states redraw their maps to help the party preserve its slim House majority in the potentially difficult 2026 midterm elections.<\/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

Texas this summer was the first state to meet Trump\u2019s demands in what has become\u00a0an expanding national battle\u00a0over redistricting. Republicans drew the state\u2019s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and\u00a0Missouri\u00a0and\u00a0North Carolina\u00a0followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves,\u00a0California voters approved\u00a0a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.<\/p>\n

The 2-1 decision followed a nearly two-week trial in El Paso, Texas.<\/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.<\/p>\n

They sought an order\u00a0blocking Texas from using the map while their case proceeded, which would force the state to use the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 for next year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

The panel of judges granted the critics\u2019 request, signaling that they think those critics have a substantial chance of winning their case at trial. One judge was appointed by Trump, another by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and one by Democratic President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\"\"FILE \u2013 A map of U.S Congressional Districts proposed plan is seen at a Texas legislators\u2019 public hearing on congressional redistricting in Austin, Texas, Aug. 1, 2025. (AP Photo\/Eric Gay, file)<\/p>\n

Republicans in Texas said repeatedly during the Legislature\u2019s debates this summer and after that they were redrawing districts solely to help Republicans win more seats. The U.S. Supreme Court gave states the go-ahead to pursue partisan gerrymandering by\u00a0ruling in 2019\u00a0that it\u2019s a political issue beyond the reach of the federal courts.<\/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

Democrats across the U.S. have described the redistricting in Texas and other states as a power grab by Trump designed to prevent a congressional check on him, regardless of voter anger. Republicans are keen to avoid a repeat of the 2018 midterms, when they lost the majority and the Democratic-controlled House twice impeached Trump.<\/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

In doing so, they eliminated what had been five of nine \u201ccoalition\u201d districts, where no racial or ethnic minority has a majority but together minorities outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the voting-age population. Five of six Democratic lawmakers drawn into districts with other incumbents are Black or Hispanic.<\/p>\n

Yet 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas cannot use\u00a0a new congressional map drawn\u00a0by Republicans in hopes of securing the party additional U.S. House seats,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[16321,132,134,133,3480,30472,2830,27,6506],"class_list":["post-55823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-ap","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-gerrymandering","tag-racial-gerrymandering","tag-redistricting","tag-texas","tag-voting-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55823","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=55823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}