Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal three-judge panel found the congressional redistricting map passed by the Republican-led legislature at the urging of former President Donald Trump amounted to racial gerrymandering.
The panel issued a temporary block on the map and ordered the state to use the district lines from the last two elections. The map, drawn in August, was designed to give Republicans an advantage and potentially flip as many as five Democratic-held U.S. House seats in the 2026 elections.
“Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings,” Abbott said in a statement. “This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has declared a U.S. Senate run, also said he would appeal the decision, calling the “Big Beautiful Map” “entirely legal.”
The court’s 160-page opinion, written by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown—appointed by Trump—concluded that while politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map, evidence showed Texas racially gerrymandered it. The panel heard a trial in October brought by plaintiffs that included civil rights groups and individuals.
The judges pointed to a letter from the Department of Justice that Abbott cited when calling lawmakers into a special session. That letter criticized districts with majority non-white voting populations as “racial gerrymanders,” suggesting existing districts gave non-white voters an advantage that should be corrected. The panel said Republicans later shifted to arguing the map was meant for partisan advantage, not to remedy a racial tilt.
Brown criticized the DOJ letter itself—sent by Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in the matter—as containing numerous “factual, legal, and typographical errors,” and said its construction contributed to undermining defenders of the map. Political scientist Josh Blank of the University of Texas at Austin said the letter put lawmakers “in a difficult spot” because their explanations were inconsistent.
Democrats hailed the ruling. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas said, “Race was always a driving factor and a driving factor to make it harder for minority Texans. This map was drawn to make it harder for them to have an impact in elections.” Rep. Gene Wu, the Democratic leader in the Texas House, said the decision shows courts still uphold the principle of “one person, one vote.” Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, called the ruling “a rebuke of Donald Trump and to some degree a rebuke of lawmakers in Texas,” saying the panel found flaws in the process and questioned the DOJ’s legal arguments.
The Texas redistricting fight drew national attention when Democratic legislators fled the state for more than two weeks to delay the vote; Republican leaders threatened arrest to compel them back. Democrats argued the new map diluted Latino and Black voting power.
The decision is significant amid a broader, nationwide redistricting battle. Trump has urged Republican state lawmakers around the country to redraw congressional maps to preserve the GOP’s narrow House majority and strengthen his agenda. Because Republicans control more state legislatures, they have more opportunities to shape maps than Democrats. At the behest of Trump, Missouri and North Carolina passed new maps that could help Republicans gain a seat in each state, and Ohio adopted a map analysts say slightly favors Republicans. Meanwhile, California voters passed an initiative that could help Democrats win up to five seats, a court-ordered redistricting in Utah could aid Democrats there, and Virginia Democrats are pursuing a process that might yield two seats.
The Texas ruling came in a 2-1 decision by the three-judge panel. The court ordered the state to revert to the previous district maps while the legal fight continues. Reporters Blaise Gainey and Andrew Schneider contributed reporting for The Texas Newsroom and Houston Public Media; Larry Kaplow with NPR also contributed to this story.