Spring elections are growing closer, but federal courts are currently undecided on which map Texas will use for its congressional races. On Nov. 18, a federal court suspended the state from using its newly drawn map resulting from gerrymandering; however, that decision has since been temporarily blocked by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed a mid-decade map for Texas Congressional districts in August. The map was issued after requests from President Donald Trump and will likely give Republicans five additional seats in the House of Representatives. The map’s passage came after Texas Ddemocratic representatives fled the state in protest, citing partisan and racial gerrymandering.
Austin, Houston and Dallas were predominantly affected, with several districts flipping from Democrat to Republican majorities. In the San Antonio area, the map drew Progressive Congressman Greg Casar, District 35, who represents east and downtown San Antonio, out of his district. Under the 2025 map, Casar would run in District 37, currently occupied by fellow progressive representative Lloyd Doggett.
In response, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic organization, sued Abbott and other Texas officials to overturn the map. The lawsuit alleges that “[substantial] evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
According to the lawsuit, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to Texas lawmakers stating that four districts in Texas were unconstitutional since they were majority nonwhite, with no racial group holding a majority. The letter states the DOJ would press legal action if the racial issues were not rectified.
The lawsuit also highlights testimony from Dr. Moon Duchin, a statistics professor at the University of Chicago, explaining that race-based decision-making best describes the 2025 map. Duchin ran a program simulating hundreds of thousands of potential districts and compared the average racial makeup of the districts with the 2025 map. If the new map were race-neutral, then current demographics would fall within a hypothetical range. In the Houston and Dallas areas, four and three districts, respectively, were statistical anomalies, respectively,, while Austin-San Antonio had three districts on the outer edges of expectations. Duchin concluded that it was highly unlikely that the map was drawn without race in mind.
The three-judge Western District Court of Texas for the U.S. agreed with LULAC, restoring the previous 2021 map, stating, “[the] 2025 Map’s racial characteristics did not result from the blind pursuit of partisan gain, but from the intentional manipulation of the districts’ racial makeup.”
Casar praised the decision in a post on X.
“The Trump-Abbott maps are clearly illegal, and I’m glad these judges have blocked them,” said Casar said. “If this decision stands, I look forward to running for reelection in my current district.”
The governor’s office shot back by immediately appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, asking for SCOTUS to overturn the district court’s decision. The state asserts that the decision happened too close to the spring elections and that LULAC should have produced an alternate map, a factor that is usually required.
The appeal was sent to Alito through the Supreme Court’s increasingly controversial shadow docket. It was not accompanied by oral arguments or a response from LULAC. Alito granted the state’s request, independent of the rest of the court. His ruling will stay in place, pending a further decision from the other eight justices.
Yesterday, LULAC was due to respond to the application, and the case will likely be ongoing for the next few weeks or months.
The court’s ultimate decision is uncertain as it is currently hearing a challenge to Louisiana redistricting and the Voting Rights Act. In the past, the court has shifted away from race-based solutions, believing that those “remedies are permissible for a period of time,” not indefinitely. Readers can stay up to date at paisano-online.com.
