The Texas congressional map lawsuit is a consolidated federal case, led by LULAC v. Abbott, challenging the state’s post-2020 congressional and legislative districts as racial gerrymanders that dilute Latino, Black, and Asian American voting power. After a three-judge panel blocked Texas’s 2025 mid-decade congressional map in November 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed that ruling and then summarily reversed it in April 2026, allowing the new map to be used in the 2026 midterm elections.1SCOTUSblog. Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens
Who Sued and What They Alleged
The litigation began in the fall of 2021, after the Texas Legislature redrew its congressional, state Senate, and state House maps following the 2020 census. By mid-December 2021, at least nine separate lawsuits had been consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso under LULAC v. Abbott.2All about Redistricting. LULAC v. Abbott
The plaintiffs included the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Texas NAACP, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, Voto Latino, the Fair Maps Texas Action Committee (a coalition including the League of Women Voters of Texas, the ACLU of Texas, and Asian American advocacy groups), and individual voters of color.3League of Women Voters. Fair Maps Texas Action Committee v. Abbott4Brennan Center for Justice. Fair Maps Texas Action Committee v. Abbott The Biden-era Department of Justice filed its own challenge on December 6, 2021, alleging the congressional and state House plans violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating a Latino opportunity district in West Texas, failing to create a new district reflecting Harris County’s growing Latino electorate, and drawing majority-white districts in areas where minority populations had surged.5The ARP. United States v. Texas
Collectively, the plaintiffs raised three types of claims: racial gerrymandering under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, vote dilution under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and intentional racial discrimination.6The ARP. Texas State Conf. of the NAACP v. Abbott The challenged districts spanned Fort Bend, Bell, Collin, Tarrant, Harris, and Dallas counties, areas where minority populations had grown but where the new maps allegedly “cracked” those communities across districts or “packed” them into a handful of seats.4Brennan Center for Justice. Fair Maps Texas Action Committee v. Abbott
A bench trial on the 2021 maps ran from May 21 to June 11, 2025.2All about Redistricting. LULAC v. Abbott Before the trial court could rule, the focus of the case shifted entirely.
The 2025 Mid-Decade Map
In January 2025, the incoming Trump administration reversed the federal government’s position. On March 6, 2025, the Justice Department formally dismissed its remaining claims against Texas.7Democracy Docket. Trump’s DOJ Withdraws Claims in Texas Redistricting Lawsuit Four months later, on July 7, 2025, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote to Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton claiming that four Texas congressional districts (9, 18, 29, and 33) were unconstitutional “coalition districts” (seats where no single racial group held a majority but where Black and Hispanic voters together elected their preferred candidates) and threatened legal action if Texas did not redraw them.8Texas Tribune. Texas Congressional Redistricting DOJ Coalition Districts
Governor Abbott called a special legislative session. In August 2025 the Legislature passed HB 4, a new mid-decade congressional map, and Abbott signed it on September 5, 2025.9Texas Legislature. HB 4 Bill History House Democrats broke quorum in an attempt to block the vote but did not stop passage.10Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Will Appeal Federal Court Decision Stalling Texas’s New Congressional Map Senate sponsor Phil King stated the map’s goal was to “preserve GOP control” of the U.S. House, with a design aimed at flipping five seats to Republicans.11Axios Houston. Texas Redistricting Black Latino Vote Representation Lawsuits
The new map increased majority-Hispanic districts from seven to eight and created two majority-Black districts where none had existed, but it cut coalition districts from nine to four.11Axios Houston. Texas Redistricting Black Latino Vote Representation Lawsuits The new majority-minority seats sat on the narrowest possible margins, with minority voting-age populations between 50.2% and 50.5%; one district was shifted from 25.6% to 50.3% Hispanic, another from 38.8% to 50.5% Black.12Supreme Court of the United States. Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, No. 25A608
In Houston, the 29th Congressional District’s Hispanic eligible voting population dropped from 63% to 43% as heavily Latino cities like Galena Park and Jacinto City were carved out, and more than 200,000 voters were added from the neighboring 18th District, historically a hub of Black political power.13Texas Tribune. Texas Redistricting Sylvia Garcia Congress Black Latino Voters
The Federal Court Blocks the Map
On November 18, 2025, a three-judge federal panel issued a preliminary injunction barring Texas from using the 2025 map in the 2026 midterms and ordering the state to revert to the 2021 map. The panel included Judge Jeffrey Brown (a Trump appointee), Senior Judge David Guaderrama (an Obama appointee), and Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith (a Reagan appointee).14Texas Tribune. Texas Redistricting Ruling Lawsuit El Paso Court Midterms
Judge Brown’s majority opinion found that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map,” concluding state leaders directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race to eliminate coalition districts and construct new majority-Hispanic and majority-Black seats. An expert testified that out of tens of thousands of simulated maps drawn using race-neutral criteria, “not one of them had racial demographics that looked anything like those in the 2025 Map.”12Supreme Court of the United States. Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, No. 25A608 Judge Smith dissented.14Texas Tribune. Texas Redistricting Ruling Lawsuit El Paso Court Midterms
Attorney General Paxton announced an immediate appeal, calling the map “entirely legal” and asserting Texas has a “sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”10Texas Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Will Appeal Federal Court Decision Stalling Texas’s New Congressional Map
The Supreme Court Reverses
The injunction landed weeks before the December 8, 2025, candidate filing deadline and the March 3, 2026, primary. On November 21, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary administrative stay restoring the 2025 map while the full Court considered Texas’s emergency application.14Texas Tribune. Texas Redistricting Ruling Lawsuit El Paso Court Midterms
On December 4, 2025, the Supreme Court granted the stay in an unsigned order, letting Texas use the 2025 map for the 2026 elections. The Court stated that “Texas is likely to succeed on the merits” and that the lower court had committed “at least two serious errors”: failing to honor the presumption of legislative good faith and failing to draw an adverse inference against the challengers for not producing an alternative map.15SCOTUSblog. Supreme Court Allows Texas to Use Redistricting Map Challenged as Racially Discriminatory
Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, wrote a concurrence asserting it was “indisputable” that the map’s impetus was “partisan advantage pure and simple,” a framing that carries legal weight because under the Court’s 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision, federal courts lack jurisdiction over purely partisan gerrymandering claims.16CNN. Supreme Court Allows Texas to Use Trump-Backed Congressional Map in Midterms
Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented. She accused the majority of “arrogating to itself” the fact-finding role of a district court on a “cold paper record” rather than deferring to the trial court’s nine-day evidentiary hearing. The order, she wrote, “disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”12Supreme Court of the United States. Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, No. 25A608
On April 27, 2026, the Supreme Court resolved the merits appeal with a summary reversal, reversing the district court’s judgment without full briefing or oral argument. The one-line order stated: “For the reasons set forth in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, 607 U.S. ___ (2025), we reverse the District Court’s judgment.” Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented.1SCOTUSblog. Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens The formal judgment issued on May 29, 2026.17Supreme Court of the United States. Docket No. 25-845
What Map Applies in 2026, and What Is Still Open
The Supreme Court’s summary reversal ended the challenge to the 2025 congressional map on the merits under the current legal framework. The 2025 map will be used for the November 2026 midterm elections.
The underlying challenge to the 2021 state legislative maps, the subject of the May–June 2025 bench trial, remains formally unresolved; the trial court had not issued findings on those maps before the mid-decade redistricting overtook the proceedings.18Texas State Redistricting. Memorandum Opinion and Order Granting Preliminary Injunction MALDEF has said it will keep pursuing the case. “We will continue to challenge the Texas redistricting plans, both at the U.S. Supreme Court and in the trial court, with the goal that all Texas voters have a real chance to elect their representatives,” said Nina Perales, MALDEF’s vice president of litigation and lead counsel for the LULAC plaintiffs.19MALDEF. MALDEF Statement on Supreme Court Order Allowing New Texas Redistricting Maps to Be Used for 2026
Why the Legal Path Has Narrowed
Three rulings during the case reshaped what challengers must prove.
In May 2024, the Supreme Court decided Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, holding 6-3 that racial gerrymandering challengers face an “especially stringent” burden to disentangle race from politics. When a state claims partisan motivations, trial courts should draw an adverse inference against plaintiffs who fail to produce an alternative map showing the same political goals could have been achieved without the alleged racial sorting.20Justia. Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP That reasoning drove the Supreme Court’s stay order in the Texas case.
In August 2024, the Fifth Circuit ruled 12-5 en banc in Petteway v. Galveston County that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not allow different minority groups to combine their populations to bring a vote dilution claim, overruling its own 1988 precedent Campos v. City of Baytown.21Houston Public Media. U.S. 5th Circuit Rules for Galveston County in Voting Rights Case, Striking Down Decades of Precedent The trial court acknowledged in February 2025 that it was bound by Petteway, which effectively eliminated coalition-district claims in the Texas litigation.2All about Redistricting. LULAC v. Abbott
Then on April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais that the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority congressional district. Justice Alito’s majority opinion held that Section 2 compliance can be a compelling interest justifying the use of race in redistricting, but only when the VRA actually requires the remedy. The Court also tightened the evidence needed for Section 2 claims, requiring that plaintiffs’ illustrative maps not use race as a criterion and satisfy all of a state’s legitimate political objectives, and that evidence of racially polarized voting be disentangled from partisan affiliation.22SCOTUSblog. Louisiana v. Callais23Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais, Nos. 24-109, 24-110
Together, Alexander, Petteway, and Callais have made it harder to prove racial gerrymandering when a state claims partisan motivation, barred coalition-based Voting Rights Act claims in the Fifth Circuit, and raised the evidentiary bar for Section 2 claims nationwide.