{"id":57137,"date":"2025-11-20T03:05:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T03:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/57137\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T03:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T03:05:23","slug":"federal-court-blocks-texas-newly-drawn-us-house-map-that-set-off-redistricting-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/57137\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal court blocks Texas’ newly drawn US House map that set off redistricting battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas from using\u00a0a redrawn US House map<\/a>\u00a0that 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

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<\/a> to give Democrats an additional five seats there.<\/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

A federal court blocked Texas from using its newly drawn US House district map. Photo by DANIEL SLIM\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The 2-1 decision followed a nearly two-week trial in El Paso, Texas. Texas\u2019 expected appeal would be directly to the US Supreme Court, under a federal law dealing with redistricting lawsuits.<\/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 US 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. Judges appointed by Trump and Democratic President Barack Obama formed the majority. 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

Texas approved the new district map in August. AP Photo\/Eric Gay<\/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 US 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

But the two appeals judges concluded that a major reason that GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers moved was a letter from the head of the US 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 US 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 US 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 argued that so-called \u201ccoalition\u201d districts, where no group has a majority but minority voters together outnumber non-Hispanic white voters, must be dismantled as \u201cvestiges of an unconstitutional racially based gerrymandering past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature adopted those racial objectives,\u201d the majority said. \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<\/p>\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton\u2019s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the ruling.<\/p>\n

A protest against the new Texas congressional district map in the state Capitol building in Austin on Aug. 20, 2025. Mikala Compton\/Austin American-Statesman via AP<\/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 US 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

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/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 coalition districts. 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":"A federal court on Tuesday blocked Texas from using\u00a0a redrawn US House map\u00a0that touched off a nationwide redistricting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2671,145,287,27,12521,734],"class_list":["post-57137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57137","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=57137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}