Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map

The move dealt a blow to efforts by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state. Texas quickly filed a notice of appeal to the Supreme Court.

A federal court in Texas on Tuesday blocked the state’s newly redrawn and Republican-friendly congressional map from going into effect in the 2026 midterm elections, dealing a blow to an effort by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state.

The panel of three federal judges in El Paso, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with civil rights groups that had sued to invalidate the map, which was part of Texas’s aggressive mid-decade push to draw new congressional boundaries at Mr. Trump’s behest.

“The Court orders that the 2026 congressional election in Texas shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021,” the court said, issuing a preliminary injunction barring the map’s use.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who directed state legislators to redraw the congressional map this summer, quickly said the state would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. The state filed its notice of appeal later on Tuesday.

If Texas files an emergency application, asking the court to clear the way for the map, it would be likely to go first to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., one of the court’s conservatives, because he is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from that region of the country. He is also likely to be the justice who sets a briefing schedule for the case and who could issue a brief pause, called an “administrative stay,” meant to give the full court time to consider the case.

In the Texas court’s 160-page opinion written by Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019, the judges found that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” The court cited a July letter from the Justice Department to Texas lawmakers, focused on the racial makeup of districts, in which federal prosecutors said the state’s 2021 map was unconstitutional because it included districts where no ethnic group had an outright majority. The court said that was a “legally incorrect assertion.”

Judge Brown was joined by Judge David C. Guaderrama, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. Judge Jerry Smith, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, opposed the decision.

Civil rights leaders who brought the suit celebrated the decision on Tuesday.

“This is a victory for the voters of Texas and for the fight to preserve democracy nationwide,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., which brought the suit along with several other groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Mr. Abbott criticized the decision, saying in a statement that “the Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason.” He said that any claim that the map was racially discriminatory was “absurd and unsupported by the testimony” that the court heard over 10 days of hearings.

While the ultimate legal outcome is uncertain, the court’s decision was the latest setback to Mr. Trump’s attempt to tilt more states’ congressional maps in Republicans’ favor before the 2026 midterms. Last week, Republicans in Indiana announced that they would not be taking up the president’s request to redraw the state’s map, drawing blowback from Mr. Trump on social media over the weekend.

At the outset of this year’s sudden and unusual push to redraw congressional maps in the middle of the decade, it appeared that Mr. Trump and Republicans had the upper hand, with their party in control of the mapmaking process in more states.

But since Texas passed its map in August, Democrats have countered with a gerrymander of their own in California, with Virginia and potentially other states set to follow. When Gov. Gavin Newsom of California introduced his state’s redistricting plan, he said it would take effect only if Texas also gerrymandered its congressional maps. But that provision was removed from the measure three days before lawmakers took final votes on it.

So should the federal court decision in Texas hold, Democrats could find themselves ahead in the redistricting battle. (Republicans have also sued to challenge the new California map, adding even more uncertainty to the national picture.)

“Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “This ruling is a win for Texas, and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”

A major wild card in the national fight over maps is the fate of the Voting Rights Act, which faces a critical test at the Supreme Court this term. The justices appeared skeptical in October of upholding a key provision of the law. If the court strikes down that provision, which allows lawmakers to consider race when drawing districts, Republicans in states across the South would be able to tear up their maps and wipe out a series of seats held by Democrats of color.

At the same time, the Texas court decision signals that litigation could still be a bulwark against both parties’ efforts to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. Courts have long been the venue for civil rights groups and political parties to challenge the validity of maps, and nearly every newly passed congressional map this year is already facing legal challenges.

Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement that “the Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal,” using Mr. Trump’s nickname for the Texas redistricting. Mr. Paxton said he expected the Supreme Court “to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

The legal battle is taking place against a fast-moving political clock in Texas. The deadline for candidates to file to run next year is early next month, and the primary elections are scheduled for March.

The Republican push to redistrict in Texas began this year at the urging of the White House, as early as February and March, according to the court.

Mr. Abbott called a special session over the summer, summoning back legislators to redraw the map in an attempt to pick up as many as five seats currently held by Democrats. Republicans currently hold 25 of the state’s 38 seats in the U.S. House.

Republicans control both chambers of the State Legislature and moved swiftly to enact a new map that took aim at urban districts in and around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, as well as along the border with Mexico.

Democrats in the State House temporarily halted the process by fleeing the state and denying Republicans a legislative quorum necessary to adopt the map. The move, while ultimately unsuccessful in fully blocking the map, drew national attention to the aggressive redistricting in Texas. It spurred Democrats in California to embark on their own aggressive redrawing of the state’s congressional map to counteract the possible Republican gains in Texas.

“Greg Abbott and his Republican cronies tried to silence Texans’ voices to placate Donald Trump, but now have delivered him absolutely nothing,” State Representative Gene Wu of Houston, who led the Democratic walkout, said after the decision on Tuesday.

During the legislative hearings over the summer, Republican lawmakers repeatedly stressed that they were redrawing the congressional lines for partisan purposes, to advantage Republicans, and not based on race. Such a distinction is critical after the Supreme Court effectively blessed partisan gerrymandering in a 2019 ruling.

“Partisanship, political performance, pro-Republican is fine. It’s legal,” said State Representative Todd Hunter, a Republican who carried the legislation and defended the map during a final floor debate in the Texas House in August.

But in its opinion, the court cited statements that Mr. Abbott and legislative leaders had made that suggested they had drawn their map to alleviate the Justice Department’s concerns about the racial makeup of districts — and not for purely partisan reasons.

“For these and other reasons, the Plaintiff Groups are likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” the court wrote.

Laurel Rosenhall and Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.

Related Content