Texas appeals ruling that Trump-urged voting map is racial gerrymandering : NPR

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly appealed to the Supreme Court a ruling that redistricting passed by lawmakers at President Trump's urging was based on racial gerrymandering.

“Any claim that these cards are discriminatory is absurd and is not supported by testimony given during the ten days of hearings,” Abbott, a Republican, said in a statement. “This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the power that the U.S. Constitution gives the Texas Legislature to impose a different map by judicial fiat.”

Earlier Tuesday, a three-judge panel temporarily blocked the map that Republican lawmakers passed this summer and ordered the state to use district maps from the last two elections.

The map that was scrapped was drawn to give Republicans an advantage in flipping up to five Democratic-held House seats.

“Of course, politics played a role in drawing up the 2025 Map. But there was much more to it than just politics. “Substantial evidence shows that Texas rigged Map 2025 on racial grounds,” the majority of the three-judge panel wrote.

Panel heard the court on business in October.

The decision is a blow to Trump and Republicans. national redistricting race What started in Texas this summer.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate, also said he would appeal the decision on the Big Beautiful Map, which he called in a statement “entirely legal.”

Democrats praised the court's decision. “Race has always been a driving factor and a driving factor in making life difficult for Texas minorities,” Texas Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher said in an interview. “This map was drawn up to make it harder for them to influence the election.”

The court's 2:1 decision came at a crucial moment. Across the country, Trump is pressuring Republican state lawmakers to change congressional voting maps to maintain the party's slim House majority and support his agenda.

Leveraging their overwhelming Republican majority in the legislature, Texas lawmakers passed a map in August designed to help their party strengthen its ranks in the 2026 U.S. House elections.

The process gained national attention when Democrats in the Legislature fled the state for more than two weeks to delay the vote, and Republican leaders threatened to arrest them. Democrats argued that the new map weakened the voting power of Latino and black communities.

Texas redistricting also spurred California Democrats to act. This month California voters passed a redistricting initiative that could help Democrats win five seats in the state.

Was it partisan machination or racial machination?

Republicans in the Texas Legislature handed over the card, saying it was designed to improve their party's chances of winning five congressional seats. They noted that, unlike some states, Texas law does not prohibit redistricting for partisan gain and that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot intervene when it occurs.

But partisan gerrymandering can often overlap with racial gerrymandering, which is illegal. Opponents of the card argued in court that it was deliberately reduced voting rights for minority communities.

The 160-page opinion was written by Circuit Judge Jeffrey W. Brown, who was appointed by Trump during his first term as president. His decision was based on statements and contradictions in what Republican lawmakers said when the maps were passed.

A letter written by the Justice Department to encourage redistricting ultimately led to a court blocking the effort.

The justices noted that when Governor Abbott initially called lawmakers into session to draw up the map, he quoted a letter from the Ministry of Justice officials criticize districts with a majority of nonwhite voters as “racial gerrymandering.” In other words, the letter implied that districts as they currently stood gave an advantage to nonwhite voters, and that needed to change.

In the end, Texas Republicans said the map was not intended to correct racial imbalances but for partisan gain.

The letter put lawmakers, who for years had denied using race in drawing maps, in a “difficult position,” according to University of Texas at Austin political scientist Josh Blank, because they “ended up saying the opposite.”

Brown's ruling criticized the very design of the letter, which was sent by Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division. “It is difficult to unpack the DOJ letter as it contains so many factual, legal and typographical errors,” Brown wrote.

“This decision is a rebuke to Donald Trump and in some ways a rebuke to Texas lawmakers,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “They believe the process was flawed and their legal arguments were not credible.”

Rep. Gene Woo, the Democratic leader in the Texas House, said Tuesday's decision shows the courts remain committed to American principles.

“The rejection of the cards is essentially a sign that the courts still believe in the fundamental principles of this country: that the idea of ​​'one person, one vote' is something absolute and must be upheld,” Wu said.

Around the country Republicans have more power to redistrict seats differently than Democrats, in part because the GOP controls more state legislatures. States typically redistrict at the beginning of the decade after the national census.

At Trump's direction, lawmakers in Missouri and North Carolina passed new maps that could help the GOP win seats in each state. Ohio has drawn a map that analysts say gives Republicans a slight advantage of a few seats.

For Democrats, in addition to the five seats up for grabs in California, court-ordered redistricting in Utah could help Democrats win a seat there. And Virginia Democrats have begun a process that could yield two seats in the state.

Blaise Gainey covers state politics for The Texas Newsroom. Andrew Schneider covers politics and government for Houston Public Media.

Larry Kaplow with NPR contributed to this story.