Federal Court Blocks Texas Gerrymander

A panel of three federal judges has blocked Texas from using a new gerrymandered congressional map in the 2026 election, dealing a significant blow to President Donald Trump’s national effort to rig the midterm vote by creating more Republican congressional seats at the expense of minority voters.

Hours later, Texas appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a scathing opinion, Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote that the Republican attempt to redistrict was not just about politics. Rather, “[s]ubstantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Brown opened his opinion with a quote from Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Judge David C. Guaderrama, an appointee of President Barack Obama, joined Brown’s opinion. Judge Jerry E. Smith, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, will file a dissenting opinion.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the ruling “clearly erroneous,” asserting that it “undermines the authority [of] the U.S. Constitution.”

Texas Democrats were quick to react. In a statement, Texas House Minority Leader Rep. Gene Wu praised the court for stopping “one of the most brazen attempts to steal our democracy that Texas has ever seen.” 

“Greg Abbott and xhis Republican cronies tried to silence Texans’ voices to placate Donald Trump, but now have delivered him absolutely nothing,” Wu said. “The governor delayed relief for victims of the July 4th flooding in Kerr County, weaponized law enforcement against us, filed frivolous lawsuits to intimidate us, and still lost.”

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX) hailed the ruling, writing that “race drove Texas’s mid-decade redistricting effort from start to finish.” 

The gerrymandered 2025 maps “should offend every Texan–no matter who they vote for– because it betrays the fundamental principle that Texans should have a say in our government,” she said in a statement.

Greg Casar, a Democratic congressman whose district would be dismantled by the gerrymander called the GOP map “illegal.”

“No matter what, we must fight to pass a federal ban on gerrymandering once and for all,” he wrote on X. 

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, also weighed in.

“These maps were only introduced in the first place because Donald Trump and his Texas Republican allies are afraid of facing voters after the passage of their Big Ugly Bill,” he wrote. “They expected Democrats to roll over, but instead, Democrats in Texas and across the country rose up and fought back.”

‘Extremely unlikely’

In his opinion, Brown cast doubt on the Republican narrative about the motivation for the gerrymander. 

In particular, he slammed several Republicans who testified during the nine-day hearing, finding that mapmaker Adam Kincaid and State Sen. Phil King, who led the Senate’s redistricting committee, were not credible witnesses.

Brown discredited Kinkaid’s testimony that he had drawn the 2025 map “blind to race,” writing that he found it “extremely unlikely” that the mapmaker could have created congressional districts with that specific racial makeup “by pure chance.” 

The judge also pointed to troubling discrepancies in Kincaid and King’s testimony, particularly how the two men recalled their conversations differently. 

“The number of inconsistencies regarding potentially critical exchanges between the Chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee and the person who drew the 2025 Map makes us doubt the veracity of Chairman King’s testimony,” Brown wrote. “For the foregoing reasons, we do not credit Chairman King’s testimony about the Legislature’s motives.”

Redistricting done wrong

States typically redraw maps each decade when new Census data is released. But Texas began this summer’s unusual mid-decade redistricting after pressure from Trump to give the GOP more seats in Congress. 

After lawmakers drew a new map that dismantled five Democratic districts, minority voters and voting advocates quickly filed a challenge, alleging that the map discriminated against Black and Hispanic voters.

The GOP’s gerrymandering efforts have since spread beyond Texas, with the party positioning itself to pick up one more seat in Missouri and another in North Carolina.  And Trump continues to pressure Republican lawmakers in several other states to redistrict. 

Meanwhile, Democrats could gain five seats in California after voters approved a plan to redraw the state’s congressional map in response to Texas.

A nine-day hearing on the Texas challenge, held in El Paso last month, centered on the question of whether Texas Republicans drew a map that intentionally discriminated against minorities. 

Federal courts have been unable to block partisan gerrymandering since a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, but racial gerrymandering remains illegal. 

As a result, lawyers for Texas argued the state stole congressional seats from Democratic voters – not specifically from minority voters. 

But plaintiffs pointed to a letter sent by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) urging Texas leaders to redraw because of concerns about race-based districts in the state’s existing map. Abbott even cited the letter in announcing the redraw. He again referenced the DOJ’s legal argument when he was asked about why he called for the state to redistrict during a TV interview.

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) also spoke of “concerns raised by the Department of Justice” when the legislature passed the map.

During closing arguments in the case, Nina Perales, an attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, pointed to the DOJ letter as a rare example of unequivocal evidence that the state intentionally diluted the strength of minority voters when drawing the new map. 

“We could not have clearer facts than we have today,” Perales told the court.

Texas lawyers argued that Republican lawmakers didn’t redraw the maps because of the DOJ letter — rather, they said, the state did it to pick up more seats in Congress. 

The court didn’t allow plaintiffs to question Kincaid, the GOP operative who drew the map, about his conversations with Abbott, which could have shed further light on the motivations driving the redraw.

“Defendants argue that what the Governor and the legislature really cared about was partisan performance and President Trump’s demand for more Republican seats, not the destruction of coalition districts,” a brief filed by plaintiffs’ lawyers noted. “But the Governor chose not to testify, and his lawyers invoked legislative privilege to prevent Plaintiffs from probing his true motivations.”

Kincaid did, however, reveal in his testimony that he reviewed the DOJ letter a week before it was sent – and that he was hired by the Republican National Committee to draw the map. He also said he communicated with the White House about redistricting using messages on Signal that were set to automatically delete. 

Kincaid told the court he took directions only from the White House and Texas’ GOP congressional delegation when drawing the map. He also said that, unlike when he drew the last Texas map in 2021, he was not instructed to protect any minority districts this time.

In his ruling, Brown concluded it was “challenging to unpack the DOJ Letter because it contains so many factual, legal, and typographical errors.”

However, the letter clearly pointed to a racial motive for gerrymandering the map, the judge concluded. 

“The DOJ Letter is equally notable for what it doesn’t include: any mention of partisanship,” Brown wrote. “Had the Trump Administration sent Texas a letter urging the State to redraw its congressional map to improve the performance of Republican candidates, the Plaintiff Groups would then face a much greater burden to show that race—rather than partisanship—was the driving force behind the 2025 Map. But nothing in the DOJ Letter is couched in terms of partisan politics.”

This story has been updated to include new information.

Some Texas voters are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.