Republicans and Democrats squared off in court Monday in a high-stakes battle over the fate of California's Proposition 50, which redraws the state's congressional districts and could ultimately help determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
Dozens of California politicians and Sacramento insiders, including GOP members and Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell, have testified in the case or could be called to testify in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles over the next few days.
The GOP wants a three-judge panel to temporarily block California's new district map, arguing it is unconstitutional and illegally favors Latino voters.
California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50 on Nov. 4 after Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a redistricting plan as a way to counter partisan gerrymandering in Texas and other GOP-led states. Democrats acknowledged the new map would weaken Republican votes in California but said it would be just a stopgap measure to try to restore the nation's political balance.
GOP lawyers can't challenge the new redistricting map on the grounds that it disenfranchises California Republicans. In 2019, the US Supreme Court decided that complaints of partisan gerrymandering are not admissible in federal court.
But the GOP could make claims of racial discrimination. They argue that California lawmakers drew new congressional maps based on race, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th and 15th Amendments, which prohibits governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on race or color.
Republicans face an uphill battle to block the new map before the 2026 midterm elections. The hearing came just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to temporarily retain its new congressional map, a move that Newsom's office said bodes ill for Republicans trying to block California's map.
“By allowing Texas to use its fraudulent maps, the Supreme Court noted that California's maps, like Texas's, were drawn for legitimate reasons,” Brandon Richards, a spokesman for Newsom, said in a statement. “This should be the beginning and end of Republican efforts to silence California voters.”
In Texas, GOP leaders have drawn up new congressional district lines after President Trump publicly demanded they give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. A federal court blocked the map, finding that racial considerations likely made the Texas map unconstitutional. But a few days later the Supreme Court provided Texas' request to stay the decision signals that they are viewing the Texas case – and this California case – as part of a national, politically motivated redistricting battle.
“The incentive to pass the Texas map (as well as the map subsequently adopted in California),” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued“there was a party advantage in its purest form.”
The fact that the Supreme Court ruling and Alito's concurrence in the Texas case prevented California from being mentioned is not a good sign for California Republicans, said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor and director of the Defending Democracy Project at UCLA Law School.
“It’s difficult to prove racial dominance in the drawing of the map — that race trumped partisanship or other traditional principles of dividing districts,” Hasen said. “There is a higher burden in trying to get a preliminary injunction now because it will change the situation closer to the election, and the Supreme Court in its Texas ruling made it clear that courts should be cautious about making changes.”
On Nov. 4, California voters approved Proposition 50, a measure to scrap the congressional map drawn by the state's independent redistricting commission and replace it with a 2030 map drawn by lawmakers to favor Democrats.
On Monday, a key plaintiff, Assemblyman David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno), who serves on the Assembly Elections Committee, testified that the legislative commission was given only four days to analyze the redistricting maps and was not allowed to vote on them.
“The text of the bill actually states that the Assembly and Senate Election Commission prepared these maps,” Tangipa said. “It was a lie.”
Tangipa argued that his fellow Democrats have repeatedly raised the issue of increasing the representation of blacks, Latinos and Asians to bolster their arguments for redistricting.
“They forced us through emergency measures to dismantle the independent redistricting commission,” Tangipa said. “They used emotionally charged arguments, racial justifications and polarized arguments to stigmatize us.”
Defense attorneys, however, cited numerous instances in depositions and online posts where Tangipa argued that the existence of Proposition 50 served some kind of “partisan” or “political” purpose. Tangipa denied this and argued that he believed redistricting efforts were racially motivated, starting with his conversations on the Assembly floor.
The hearing began as GOP lawyers began work on the 13th Congressional District in a new map, which currently includes Merced, Stanislaus and parts of San Joaquin and Fresno counties, as well as parts of Stockton. They argued that when Mitchell drew the map, he portrayed Latino voters as a “dominant factor” over political views.
They called RealClearPolitics election analyst Sean Trend to the stand, who said he noticed an “appendage” in the new District 13 that extended partly into the San Joaquin Valley and introduced a crack in the new version of District 9.
“From my experience [appendages] usually indicate racial gerrymandering,” Trende said. “When the choice was between politics and race, race won.”
Defense attorneys, however, pressed Trende to question whether the shift among Latino voters toward Republican candidates in recent elections could have affected the new district lines rather than the racial makeup.
The defense cited Trende's sworn statement in the Texas redistricting case: The Proposition 50 map, he said at the time, “was drawn with partisan purposes in mind; in particular, it was designed to improve the Democrats' prospects” to neutralize the additional Republican seats.
Many legal scholars say the Supreme Court's decision in the Texas case means California will likely keep its new map.
“Before the Texas case, it was really difficult to bring charges of racial gerrymandering as the plaintiffs have alleged, and it has become even more difficult in the last two weeks,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
Hours after Californians voted for Proposition 50, Tangipa and the California Republican Party filed a lawsuit claiming that Proposition 50's map of California's congressional districts is designed to favor Latino voters over others.
The Justice Department also filed a lawsuit complaint The case argues that the new congressional map uses race as a proxy for politics and manipulates district lines “in the name of increasing the voting rights of California Latinos because of their race.”
Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew the maps, is likely to be a key figure in this week's battle. In the days leading up to the hearing, lawyers argued over whether Mitchell would testify and whether he should turn over his emails to lawmakers. Mitchell's lawyers argued that he had legislative privilege.
GOP lawyers seized on Mitchell's public comments that the “number one thing” he began thinking about was “creating a new Latino majority/minority district in downtown Los Angeles,” and “the first thing” he and his team did was “overturn” the California Redistricting Commission's earlier decision to remove a Latino district from Los Angeles.
However, some legal experts argue that this in itself is not a problem.
“What [Mitchell] It was essentially, “I paid attention to race,” Levitt said. “But there is nothing wrong with this in existing legislation. The problem comes when you focus too much on race to the exclusion of all other redistributive factors.”
Other legal experts say it's not the intent of Mitchell or California lawmakers that matters, but the California voters who supported Proposition 50.
“Regardless of what Paul Mitchell or legislative leaders thought, they were simply making an offer to voters,” said Hasen, who filed an amicus brief in support of the state. “So what really matters is the voters' intentions. And if you look at what was actually presented to voters in the voting pamphlet, there was virtually nothing about race.”
