Federal judge instructed state to use older maps, with Republicans likely to appeal decision
New maps that added five Republican districts in Texas hit a legal roadblock on Tuesday, with a federal judge saying the state cannot use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.
The decision is likely to be appealed, given the push for more Republican-friendly congressional maps nationwide and Donald Trump’s full-court press on his party to make them. Some states have followed suit, and some Democratic states have retaliated, pushing to add more blue seats to counteract Republicans.
A panel of three federal judges in Texas said in a decision that the state must use previously approved 2021 maps for next year’s midterms rather than the ones that kickstarted a wave of mid-decade redistricting. The plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens, are “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map”, so the court approved a preliminary injunction to stop the map’s use for next year’s elections.
They pulled the reciprocity clause out at the last minute after Texas passed it’s bill.
Womp womp.
Its probably for the better. Short of a clause triggered by eliminating the congressional district system entirely in favor of proportional voting, the idea of “counter-gerrymandering” clause is a major legal hazard’
The supreme court, for instance, might zero in on such a clause and cynically say California is ‘violating the 10th amendment rights of other states’ instead of having to find a way to strike it out under 14th amendment provisions (an amendment which the current supreme court hates)