Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms

[marble falls]

Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who had pushed Texas’ GOP leaders to draw new lines to help protect the party’s narrow U.S. House majority.

by Eleanor Klibanoff Nov. 18, 2025, 12:08 p.m. Central

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/18/texas-redistricting-ruling-lawsuit-el-paso-court-2026-midterms/


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“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

The map cleared the GOP-controlled Legislature in August and was quickly signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. Several advocacy groups sued over the new district lines, saying lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans and drew racially gerrymandered maps. Over the course of a nine-day hearing in El Paso earlier this month, they aimed to convince the judges that it was in voters’ best interest to shelve the new map until a full trial could be held.

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[bif]

1. DUPE

https://democraticunderground.com/100220814230

[marble falls]

2. This is general discussion, not Latest Breaking.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who had pushed Texas’ GOP leaders to draw new lines to help protect the party’s narrow U.S. House majority.

Breaking: Federal court blocks Texas from using new congressional gerrymander in 2026 midterms.

— Texas Tribune (@texastribune.org) 2025-11-18T18:30:03.820Z

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/18/texas-redistricting-ruling-lawsuit-el-paso-court-2026-midterms/

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling striking down the new lines. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.......

It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. There is a crazed dissent to this ruling that is really strange

I have been volunteering on election law/voting rights matters since 2004 and Prof. Hasen is a great source of information in this area. This dissent is nuts

Judge Jerry Smith Issues His 104-Page Dissent to Yesterday’s 3-Judge District Court Holding that Texas’s Re-Redistricting is Likely an Unconstitutional Racial Gerrymander. Along the Way He Calls Out the “Pernicious” & “Outrageous” Behavior of Judge Brown in the Majority electionlawblog.org?p=153106

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen.bsky.social) 2025-11-19T20:44:24.987Z

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=153106

It begins with a remarkable attack on Judge Brown (a Trump appointee) explaining that Smith was not responsible for any delay in issuing the decision:

In my 37 years on the federal bench, this is the most outrageous conduct by a judge that I have ever encountered in a case in which I have been involved.
In summary, Judge Brown has issued a 160-page opinion without giving me any reasonable opportunity to respond. I will set forth the details. The readers can judge for themselves.

And then turning to the merits:

The main winners from Judge Brown’s opinion are George Soros andmGavin Newsom. The obvious losers are the People of Texas and the Rule of Law. I dissent.
In the interest of time, this dissent is, admittedly, disjointed. Usually, in dissenting from an opinion of this length, I would spend more days refining and reorganizing the dissent for purposes of impact and readability. But that approach is not reasonably possible here because these two judges have not allowed it.

The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. If, however, there were a Nobel Prize for Fiction, Judge Brown’s opinion would be a prime candidate.

[This post is in progress]

See also

Link to tweet

I tried to read this dissent but is very disjointed and poorly written