This week, a trio of federal judges will consider whether Texas can use its new congressional map in the 2026 election, marking the first legal test for the districts produced by a summer of intense partisan clashing.
State lawmakers redrew the electoral lines with the goal of adding five more Republican seats from Texas to the GOP’s narrow House majority. But a cadre of individuals and advocacy groups now argue this unusual mid-decade redistricting is unconstitutional on several fronts, including that lawmakers illegally relied on race and drew a map that violates Black and Hispanic voters’ rights to equal protection.
They are asking the court to stop the state from using the map for the fast-approaching midterms, which would likely mean reverting to the most recent version passed in 2021 and used in each of the last two elections. The state, meanwhile, argues the new lines should stand because they were drawn with the nakedly political — yet court-sanctioned — motive of winning more GOP seats, without regard for race.
The hearing, which begins Wednesday in El Paso, will stretch for nine days. The three-judge panel, which is also overseeing an ongoing lawsuit against the four-year-old maps, will then issue a ruling on whether the new districts can be used in the midterm and, if not, which map should be used instead.
As both sides, and all three judges, are acutely aware, time is short. The filing deadline for candidates is Dec. 8, with other election administration deadlines approaching even faster.
“All of this, every part of this, is about the clock right now,” said Justin Levitt, a voting rights expert at Loyola Law School. “The plaintiffs want an answer as soon as possible. Texas wants to stall like crazy. All of this is about what’s going to get a court to deliver an answer before the next election.”
The case turns on a familiar argument, with plaintiffs arguing in one of their motions for a preliminary injunction that, if the districts are allowed to stand, “Latino and Black Texans will be irreparably harmed, deprived of their right to exercise their voting rights on equal terms with Anglo Texans.”
As with the 2021 map, the state is rebutting those claims by contending the maps were drawn “race-blind.” Their court filings have also embraced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling that the courts cannot intervene to stop partisan gerrymandering, as long as the map in question abides by other constitutional protections.
It was Trump’s demand for more GOP seats and the ensuing “political arms-race that motivated Texas legislators to redistrict mid-decade, not race,” the state wrote last week. Quoting Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the state said, “as is often the case, ‘when Donald Trump says jump, the Republicans simply ask how high.’”
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It will be up to the three judges to sort through similar claims from the different plaintiff groups to determine whether the map should be allowed to remain in effect.
A preliminary injunction is typically an extraordinary measure, granted by a court only when they believe the plaintiffs are likely to succeed at trial and there is potential harm to wait that long to intervene.
These same players, from the judges to the plaintiffs to many of the witnesses, have been locked in litigation with each other for four years. Because the judges have yet to rule on the 2021 maps, it’s hard to predict how they might handle this request, Levitt said.
But returning to El Paso so soon after the monthlong trial concluded, it’s safe to anticipate some tension from everyone involved, he said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the three-judge panel hearing this case is crazy frustrated,” he said. “Four years of [this case], and then Texas just comes in with an Etch-A-Sketch redraw that basically erased their work.”
See here for the previous update. I have no idea what to expect. I do think there’s a fighting chance that the plaintiffs could get an injunction, but I have a hard time believing that the Fifth Circuit and SCOTUS would allow it to stand. One tries to be hopeful anyway. We’ll see how combative the hearing gets. Michael Li shares an excellent guide to the claims and districts that will be at issue, and Houston Public Media and Democracy Docket have more.