The Legal Battle Over Redistricting Efforts
By: Nathan Peltier
Edited by: Eliana Aemro Selassie and Lana Alnajm
A slim majority of congressional seats for either the Republican or Democratic parties almost always decides control of the House of Representatives, making each election crucial to a party’s chances of gaining power. As a result, the lines drawn to determine congressional districts in each state can have profound implications for individual races that have a national impact. To maintain a Republican majority in the House, President Trump encouraged Republican leaders in Texas to redistrict, or redraw, district boundaries. [1] The goal is to swing upwards of five congressional seats in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, which are expected to be very competitive. [2] In response, Democratic leaders in California announced Proposition 50, a constitutional amendment that will allow the California state legislature to temporarily redraw the state electoral map to gain back the five congressional seats that are expected to go to the Republican Party in Texas. [3]
Both actions are a form of gerrymandering, the manipulation of electoral maps to gain a competitive advantage. The most common forms of gerrymandering are cracking, which splits up a certain community across several districts to make them an irrelevant majority, and packing, which concentrates a community into a few districts so they cannot have influence in the remaining ones. [4] Texas and California have deployed both cracking and packing through partisan gerrymandering to create an advantage for the political party in charge. While the Supreme Court has ruled that gerrymandering, especially on the basis of race, is unconstitutional, it has curtailed the ability of courts to rule against biased maps. In the case of Rucho v Common Cause, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no way to establish standards for identifying unconstitutional maps and that the amount of partisanship in line drawing is both inevitable and acceptable. [5].
While Texas and California are both attempting to redistrict their states, the method substantially differs. In the case of Texas, Governor Abbott convened a special legislative session to create a new electoral map. Democrats in the State Congress initially stalled the attempt by fleeing the state and refusing to grant the state government a quorum, which is the number of members required to be present for the Legislature to conduct business. [6] In the end, the democratic representatives eventually returned, giving Texas the necessary number of legislators to pass a new map. [7]
As an alternative to Governor Abbott’s approach of confined power to force through the map changes, Governor Newsom of California had a trickier path towards redistricting and had to rely on the popular vote of Californians to redraw map lines. Normally, California is one of 10 states that use an independent commission to redraw the electoral maps, and the state legislature is completely excluded from the process. [8] To bypass the independent commission and redistrict in the middle of the decade, Governor Newsom needed to pass legislation describing how the new maps would be divided, and subsequently amend the California constitution through a special election where Californian citizens voted in support of the constitutional amendment. [9] The amendment would use legislatively drawn maps until after the next census in 2030, when the independent commission would go back to creating the electoral maps. [10]
States led by both parties have also announced plans to consider changing their electoral maps for the 2026 election, to pick up more seats for the political party in charge of the state government. California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah have new congressional maps drawn for the upcoming 2026 elections, and more states, such as Virginia and Florida, are looking into the possibility. [11]
Even if other states follow in the footsteps of Texas and California, their impact is likely to be smaller. Texas and California’s vast number of delegates allows more flexibility in their electoral maps, meaning states such as Illinois and Virginia would only be able to swing one or two seats. Other states, such as New York, have a more complex process for redistricting, where it cannot happen before the 2026 midterms. [12] This makes the battle between Texas and California the most important factor in determining the outcome of the 2026 elections.
A Texas court recently struck down Texas's attempt to redistrict as an example of racial gerrymandering and forced them back to the 2021 map for 2026. [13] Texas has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which has been less willing to strike down maps as partisan gerrymandering. California and nearly every other state that wants to modify its maps are equally facing legal challenges to their propositions. [14] Despite the challenges, some experts argue California's map is more likely to be affirmed by a federal court than Texas’ because an independent analysis refuted Republican claims that the map disproportionately benefited Latino populations. [15]
Outside of the legal battles within the states that have attempted to change their maps, the Supreme Court is also in the middle of weighing a case about Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which is the basis for racial gerrymandering being unconstitutional. [16]
A Supreme Court decision that overrules Section Two of the Voting Rights Act could have immediate and long-lasting effects on mapmaking processes across the country. It would strike down the basis that the federal court used to rule against Texas in the most recent case, effectively re-legitimizing the map. However, it could also spur other states to redistrict because Section Two has been used in hundreds of cases, and 29 alone in the past decade, to declare state maps unconstitutional. [17]
It remains to be seen how far states will take gerrymandering and whether federal courts will provide a check against recent developments. Regardless, the proliferation of attempts to gerrymander across both political parties is an alarming trend for the future of competitive elections and constituents having an equitable say in their representation.
Notes:
David J Goodman and Shane Goldmacher, 2025, “White House Pushes Texas to Redistrict, Hoping to Blunt Democratic Gains,” The New York Times, June 9, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/us/politics/trump-texas-redistricting.html.
David J Goodman and Shane Goldmacher, 2025, “White House Pushes Texas to Redistrict, Hoping to Blunt Democratic Gains,” The New York Times, June 9, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/us/politics/trump-texas-redistricting.html.
“Governor Newsom Launches Statewide Response to Trump Rigging Texas’ Elections | Governor of California,” 2025, Governor of California, August 14, 2025, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/08/14/governor-newsom-launches-statewide-response-to-trump-rigging-texas-elections/.
Fair Districts PA, 2011, “About Gerrymandering,” Fair Districts PA, 2011, https://www.fairdistrictspa.com/the-problem/about-gerrymandering.
Roberts, John . 2018. Rucho v Common Cause, 18-422. Supreme Court.
Jeff Bell, 2025, “What Does It Mean to Break Quorum?” Kvue.com, KVUE, August 3, 2025. https://www.kvue.com/article/news/politics/special-session/break-quorum-texas-legislature-explained/269-9dc3aadb-9be1-4e46-9287-426ecaa54f30.
Liz Crampton, 2025, “Texas Democrats Have Returned Home, Ending Redistricting Standoff,” POLITICO, Politico, August 18, 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/18/texas-democrats-return-quorum-redistricting-00513351.
Kevin Frazzini, 2025, “California’s Winding Path to Mid-Decade Redistricting,” National Conference of State Legislatures, October 9, 2025. https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/californias-winding-path-to-mid-decade-redistricting.
Kevin Frazzini, 2025, “California’s Winding Path to Mid-Decade Redistricting,” National Conference of State Legislatures, October 9, 2025. https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/californias-winding-path-to-mid-decade-redistricting.
“Proposition 50 [Ballot].” 2025. Ca.gov. November 4, 2025, https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Proposition?number=50&year=2025.
“Redistricting ahead of the 2026 Elections,” 2020, Ballotpediam 2020, https://ballotpedia.org/Redistricting_ahead_of_the_2026_elections.
Bobby Cuza, 2025, “Democrats Face Obstacles in Changing New York’s Redistricting Laws,” Ny1.com, 2025, https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2025/08/07/democrats-face-obstacles-in-changing-new-york-s-redistricting-laws-.
Eleanor Klibanoff, 2025, “Federal Court Blocks Texas from Using New Congressional Gerrymander in 2026 Midterms,” The Texas Tribune, November 18, 2025, https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/18/texas-redistricting-ruling-lawsuit-el-paso-court-2026-midterms/.
“Redistricting Litigation Roundup | Brennan Center for Justice,” 2021, Www.brennancenter.org. December 20, 2021, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/redistricting-litigation-roundup-0.
Laura Fitzegerald, 2025, “Why Ruling in Texas Redistricting Case Won’t Impact California,” Capradio.org, 2025, https://www.capradio.org/articles/2025/11/19/why-ruling-in-texas-redistricting-case-wont-impact-california/
Michael Li, 2025, “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 15, 2025, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/section-2-voting-rights-act-supreme-court.
Michael Li, 2025, “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act at the Supreme Court,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 15, 2025, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/section-2-voting-rights-act-supreme-court.
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