From the inbox, on Monday night.
Today, the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) filed a motion in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas to ask the court to quickly set a hearing for a preliminary injunction that will be filed in order to block the enactment of a new gerrymandered congressional map that is making its way through the Texas Legislature.
Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF, issued the following statement:
“Despite bipartisan opposition among Texans, the Texas Legislature is pushing forward a congressional map that includes even fewer minority opportunity districts than the current discriminatory map, which is already being challenged in court for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In other words, the legislature is grafting a new, more extreme gerrymander onto an existing gerrymander that adds even more insult to injury for communities of color in the Lone Star State, despite the fact that they make up 60 percent of the state population. Should Governor Abbott sign the new gerrymander into law, the NRF will quickly challenge that map in federal court, and the court must be prepared to act swiftly to intervene and protect the rights of Texans.”
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I got a second press release on Tuesday morning, from the Lone Star Project, that at first made me think there were two separate motions, but both releases referred to the same filing. The key to understanding this is to read the opening paragraphs of that filing:
The Brooks Plaintiffs, LULAC Plaintiffs, and Gonzales Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court set aside dates for an expedited September hearing to adjudicate forthcoming motions for preliminary injunctions raising claims against the soon-to-be-enacted 2025 congressional redistricting plan. Moreover, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court vacate, as to the state legislative challenges, its August 11, 2025, order suspending the deadline for submitting proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law.
Plaintiffs conferred with State Defendants, who report that they are not opposed to a preliminary injunction hearing generally, believe a hearing in “early” September is “too soon, especially if [they] are briefing FOFCOL concurrent with hearing prep,” and oppose the lifting of the suspension on the briefing deadline.
I don’t know what all of those words mean, but this boils down to two things that the plaintiffs are asking for. First, just to clarify, the plaintiffs in question are the ones that are challenging the current map. The hearings are done with that case, though there were some post-trial briefs still to be filed, after which a ruling would be made. In the interim, during the first special session, the three-judge panel in that case put everything on hold pending the outcome of the legislative process as well as a couple of other cases that are on SCOTUS’ docket. So basically, this is a new filing by the existing plaintiffs of the in-progress litigation over the 2021 redistricting maps asking for those judges to take action on what is happening now.
Specifically, they want two things. One is for there to be an initial hearing on the proposed map, to get that process started now so we can perhaps have some kind of rulings in place before the 2026 elections. The defendant, which is to say the state of Texas, is more or less open to that idea, for the same reason. The other thing they want is for the panel to go ahead and continue with the process of the existing litigation so as to get to a final ruling in that case. They argue that there was no reason to put the remaining steps in that case on hold (the panel issued its ruling on its own and not in response to a motion), that the existing case isn’t affected by the outstanding SCOTUS cases, and that the plaintiffs deserve a final ruling. You can read all that for yourself in the motion, which is only six pages long and is easy enough to understand.
I don’t know what the court might do and what the effect of a favorable (or unfavorable) ruling for the plaintiffs might be. We’ll have to see if they set a briefing schedule and go from there. The promise made by the quorum busters was that they would fight the new maps in court, and while there will certainly be more litigation once a map is passed, the existing lawsuit is another avenue that is being pursued as well.
One last note:
On the Texas House side, there is a new, new congressional map as a committee substitute. The new map is Plan C2333.
https://dvr.capitol.texas.gov/Congress/89/PLANC2333 #txlege
— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) 3:36 PM – 18 August 2025
Both districts are narrowly Latino majority by citizen voting age population, but doubtful that either version (especially the newest version) would perform to elect Latino preferred candidates. #txlege
— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) 4:00 PM – 18 August 2025
I looked at the 2018 and 2024 data for this new map and it doesn’t appear to be noticeably different for the most part. Just noting this for the record. The Chron has more.