The Texas State Capitol connected the time of a caller league of the Texas House aft Democratic lawmakers near the authorities to contradict Republicans the accidental to redraw the state's 38 legislature districts, successful Austin, Texas, U.S., August 11, 2025.
Sergio Flores | Reuters
A national tribunal successful Texas connected Tuesday blocked Texas from utilizing a caller legislature representation intended to flip respective Democratic-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Republicans successful the 2026 midterm elections, faulting Governor Greg Abbott for directing the legislature to gully it based connected race.
The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge sheet dealt a large stroke to Texas Republicans who had been urged by President Donald Trump to redraw the boundaries of the state's legislature districts to maximize the fig of Republicans who could beryllium elected successful bid to support his party's constrictive U.S. House majority.
The determination by Texas to make a caller map, which could flip arsenic galore arsenic 5 Democratic-held seats to Republicans, acceptable disconnected a nationwide partisan redistricting battle, playing retired successful some Republican-governed and Democratic-led states.
The El Paso-based judicial sheet ruled successful favour of civilian rights groups that challenged the map, uncovering "substantial grounds shows that Texas racially gerrymandered" it.
Gerrymandering involves redrawing electoral territory boundaries to marginalize a definite acceptable of voters and summation the power of others. The U.S. Supreme Court successful 2019 forbade national courts from intervening successful cases involving gerrymandering done for partisan advantage. Gerrymandering predominantly driven by contention remains illegal.
Tuesday's ruling recovered that Abbott directed authorities lawmakers, who were initially hesitant astir redistricting, to redraw the representation aft helium received a missive from Trump's Justice Department.
The tribunal said the missive made an "legally incorrect assertion" and threatened ineligible enactment against the authorities if the representation was not redrawn to conscionable Justice Department recommendations. The tribunal recovered that Texas lawmakers adopted radical objectives successful drafting the map, successful usurpation of the U.S. Constitution's committedness of adjacent extortion nether the instrumentality and extortion against radical favoritism successful voting.
Democrats and civilian rights groups successful Texas had argued that the caller representation further diluted the voting powerfulness of radical minorities successful usurpation of national law. The NAACP civilian rights radical noted successful a connection connected Tuesday that "the authorities of Texas is lone 40% white, but achromatic voters power implicit 73% of the state's legislature seats."
Tuesday's ruling criticized Abbott's actions to conscionable the Trump administration's demands, stating that "the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based connected race."
Abbott said successful a connection that "any assertion that these maps are discriminatory is absurd." The politician said that Texas volition entreaty the determination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The tribunal ordered that the 2026 legislature elections beryllium carried retired nether a erstwhile map, approved by the legislature successful 2021. Republicans power 25 of 38 U.S. House seats successful Texas nether that 2021 map.
Trump has demanded that Republican-led states redraw their legislature maps to assistance his enactment clasp House control.
Tuesday's ruling marked the latest setback successful Trump's propulsion to tilt governmental maps. Indiana Republicans connected Friday abandoned a legislative league that had been called to enact a caller legislature map.
Democratic-governed California reacted to the Texas redistricting by initiating its ain effort targeting 5 Republican-held districts successful the state. California voters successful November overwhelmingly approved a caller representation beneficial to Democrats. The Trump medication past week sued California to halt its caller redistricting maps from taking effect.
Virginia has precocious a program to redraw its governmental maps, meaning Democrats could find themselves up successful the redistricting combat should the Texas tribunal determination hold.
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