The state must instead use the congressional map that Texas lawmakers drew in 2021, after the 2020 census. With all U.S. House seats up for election every two years, the 2021 map was also used in the 2022 and 2024 congressional elections.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote in the Nov. 18 preliminary injunction. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
Brown was appointed to the federal court in 2019 by President Donald Trump.
How we got here
In an attempt to net five new congressional seats for the Republican party, Texas lawmakers redrew 37 of the state’s 38 congressional districts during a special legislative session this summer. The mid-decade redistricting effort was requested by Trump, who asked Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their congressional maps to help Republicans maintain a narrow majority in the U.S. House.
Texas Republicans said they hoped the new map would help Republican candidates get elected to 30 of the state’s 38 congressional seats, up from the 25 seats held by the GOP today.
During the special session, Texas Democrats called the redistricting effort unconstitutional and "racially discriminatory," while Republicans asserted that the map "complies with the law" and was designed with partisan, rather than racial, goals in mind.
After state lawmakers approved the congressional map in August, several advocacy groups sued Texas over the new boundaries, which they said places voters “within and without particular districts on the predominant basis of their race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
A trio of federal judges held a nine-day hearing in October to determine if the new map could be used in next year’s election. Brown and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama ruled Nov. 18 that it could not be used, while U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith dissented.
What’s next
Gov. Greg Abbott said in a Nov. 18 statement that Texas would “swiftly appeal” the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences—and for no other reason,” Abbott said. “Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported.”
If the Supreme Court takes up the case, its justices will be pressed for time ahead of the March primary elections. Candidate filing for the primaries opened Nov. 8 and lasts for one month, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The court acknowledged that its Nov. 18 ruling could “disrupt” the candidate filing process, although it blamed state lawmakers for redrawing Texas’ congressional districts just over two months before filing began.
“The court is issuing its ruling well before the candidate-filing deadline of December 8. Simply put, the 2026 congressional election is not underway,” Brown wrote in the 160-page order. “In any event, any disruption that would happen here is attributable to the Legislature, not the court. ... The Legislature—not the court—redrew Texas’s congressional map weeks before precinct-chair and candidate-filing periods opened.”
More details
Before Texas began the redistricting process this summer, the U.S. Department of Justice sent state leaders a letter raising “constitutional concerns” about four congressional districts, which it said were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered.
Abbott originally cited the DOJ letter in calls to redistrict, although some state lawmakers who led the redistricting effort said during public hearings that they had not read the letter or met with DOJ officials.
“I think it's totally inappropriate to take racial considerations into account when drawing a map,” Senate redistricting committee chair Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said in August. “All the testimony that's been suggesting that this map was drawn on a racial basis is inaccurate and incorrect. So I'm disregarding that part of the testimony because I didn't take race into account, and I don't see race in this map.”
Brown wrote that Abbott “explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race.”
“In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts,” he wrote in the Nov. 18 ruling. “The Legislature adopted those racial objectives. ... The bill’s sponsors’ statements suggest they adopted those changes because such a map would be an easier sell than a purely partisan one.”
What candidates are saying
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, called the federal ruling “very good news for Texans” in a Nov. 18 statement. Doggett, Texas’ longest-serving member of Congress, previously signaled that he would resign from political office to avoid a Democratic primary matchup against U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, under the new congressional map.
“This federal court order means that I have a renewed opportunity to continue serving the only town I have ever called home, as democracy faces greater challenges than at any point in my lifetime,” Doggett said. “CD-37, which I represent; CD-35, which Congressman Casar represents; and all other existing Texas congressional districts will remain unchanged for 2026.”
State Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, said in a Nov. 18 statement that he was “confident” Brown’s ruling would be overturned by the Supreme Court.
“We are running under the lines lawfully passed by the Big Beautiful map and the courts will not thwart the will of Texas voters and their representatives,” Cain said. “We are confident this temporary court obstruction will be swiftly overcome.”
