Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map
The move by a three-judge panel dealt a blow to efforts by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state.
A voter looking in August at a proposed redistricting map that was approved by Texas lawmakers for the 2026 midterm elections. Credit...Moises Avila/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
 
By Nick Corasaniti and J. David Goodman
Nov. 18, 2025Updated 2:09 p.m. ET
A federal court in Texas on Tuesday blocked the state’s newly redrawn and Republican-friendly congressional map from going into effect in the 2026 midterm elections, dealing a blow to an effort by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state.
The panel of three federal judges in El Paso, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with civil rights groups that had sued to invalidate the map, which was part of Texas’s aggressive mid-decade push to draw new congressional boundaries at Mr. Trump’s behest.
“The Court orders that the 2026 congressional election in Texas shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021,” the court said, issuing a preliminary injunction barring the use of the map drawn this summer.
In a 160-page opinion, the court found that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” The court cited a July letter from the Justice Department to Texas lawmakers, focused on the racial makeup of districts, in which federal prosecutors said the state’s existing map was unconstitutional because it included districts where no ethnic group had an outright majority. The court said that was a “legally incorrect assertion.”
Civil rights leaders who brought the suit celebrated the decision on Tuesday.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for Black voters and other communities of color in Texas,” said Robert Weiner, the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He added: “It is a clear violation of the Constitution to design a plan to purposefully dismantle districts where Black and Brown voters together are a majority of voters. That’s discrimination by design and that is illegal.”
The court’s decision is the latest setback to Mr. Trump’s attempt to tilt more states’ congressional maps in Republicans’ favor before the 2026 midterms. Last week, Republicans in Indiana announced that they would not be taking up the president’s request to redraw the state’s map, drawing blowback from Mr. Trump on social media over the weekend.
At the outset of this year’s sudden and unusual push to redraw congressional maps in the middle of the decade, it appeared that Mr. Trump and Republicans had the upper hand, with their party in control of the mapmaking process in more states.
But since Texas passed its maps in August, Democrats have countered with gerrymanders of their own in states like California, with Virginia likely to follow. Should the federal court decision in Texas hold, Democrats could find themselves ahead in the redistricting battle.
At the same time, the Texas court decision signals that litigation could still be a bulwark against both parties’ efforts to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. Courts have long been the venue for civil rights groups and political parties to challenge the validity of maps, and nearly every newly passed congressional map this year is already facing legal challenges.
Texas Republicans are likely to appeal Tuesday’s decision, and the case could ultimately make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gov. Greg Abbott, who directed state legislators to redraw the maps this summer, did not immediately respond to the decision.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma. |
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