(Reuters) -A federal court in Texas on Tuesday blocked Texas from using a new congressional map intended to flip several Democratic-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections, faulting Governor Greg Abbott for directing the legislature to draw it based on race.
The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel dealt a major blow to Texas Republicans who had been urged by President Donald Trump to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts to maximize the number of Republicans who could be elected in order to protect his party’s narrow U.S. House majority.
The El Paso-based panel ruled in favor of civil rights groups that had challenged the map, finding that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered” it. The map was passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Abbott, a Republican, in August.
The ruling criticized Abbott’s actions to meet the Trump administration’s demands, stating “the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race.”
Democrats and civil rights groups in Texas had argued the new map further diluted the voting power of racial minorities in violation of federal law.
The court ordered that the 2026 congressional elections be carried out under a previous map, approved in 2021. Republicans control 25 of 38 U.S. House seats in Texas under that 2021 map.
Abbott said the state will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gerrymandering involves redrawing electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 forbade federal courts from intervening in cases involving gerrymandering done for partisan advantage. Gerrymandering predominantly driven by race remains illegal.
The NAACP civil rights group noted in a statement that “the state of Texas is only 40% white, but white voters control over 73% of the state’s congressional seats.”
Trump has demanded that Republican-led states redraw their congressional maps to help his party retain House control. Texas was at the forefront of the push, with Abbott signing the new Republican-backed map into law on August 29 with the aim of flipping as many as five Democratic-held seats.
Democratic-governed California reacted to the Texas redistricting by initiating its own effort targeting five Republican-held districts in the state. California voters in November overwhelmingly approved a new map beneficial to Democrats. The Trump administration last week sued California to stop its new redistricting maps from taking effect.
REPUBLICANS SAY RACE WAS NOT CONSIDERED
Republicans said the disputed map was created to improve political performance and that, while they had not considered race, it would increase majority Hispanic districts.
In a statement, Abbott said, “Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings. This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
In the ruling, the court stated that Republican lawmakers in Texas were reportedly initially apprehensive about suggestions from the Trump administration to redraw the map.
“But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board,” the ruling stated.
“It’s quite obvious that Texas’s effort to redistrict mid-decade, before next year’s midterm elections, is racially motivated,” the NAACP said. “The state’s intent here is to reduce the members of Congress who represent Black communities, and that, in and of itself, is unconstitutional.”
Other states, both Republican and Democratic, have followed suit with redistricting plans or threatened to do so.
Indiana Republicans on Friday abandoned a legislative session that had been called to enact a new congressional map, marking another setback in Trump’s redistricting push.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks, Costas Pitas and Andrew Hay; Editing by Donna Bryson and Will Dunham)
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