In a ruling that holds the capacity to redefine the 2026 congressional elections and secure the Democratic Party’s long-term hold over the US House of Representatives, a federal tribunal has just invalidated the heavily gerrymandered Texas electoral maps that President Donald Trump pressured the state to put into effect. Should this ruling remain, it could potentially strip Republicans of approximately five seats in the House.
Furthermore, there is more. The most striking element of the three-judge group’s adjudication in League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) v. Abbott is that it hinges upon an inept determination issued by the Trump government itself.
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As Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, details within the court’s written opinion, Texas legislators initially “didn’t show great enthusiasm to redraw district lines purely on partisan considerations” — even as Trump encouraged them to proceed with doing so. But, according to records, Texas Republicans shifted their perspective after the Justice Department dispatched a formal letter the previous July to Texas’s foremost officials, in which it was insisted that the state revise numerous districts to alter their demographic composition.
That correspondence, as I will elucidate in further detail later, misinterpreted a federal appellate judicial determination to imply that the state faced the necessity to recreate its maps. As per Judge Brown’s determination, “it poses difficulties to dissect the DOJ Letter because it is rife with a multitude of factual, legal, and grammatical inaccuracies.” He further included that “even attorneys who are in the employ of the Texas Attorney General — who purports to be a political ally of the Trump White House — characterize the DOJ Letter as ‘legally[] unsound,’ ‘baseless,’ ‘erroneous,’ ‘ham-fisted,’ and ‘a mess.’”
In reality, the Supreme Court has continuously maintained that “should a legislature grant race a leading significance in drawing electoral district determinations, the subsequent map” becomes subjected to the highest degree of constitutional scrutiny and “may potentially be considered unconstitutional.” When the Justice Department instructed Texas to revise multiple of its congressional districts with the purpose of amending their racial makeup, it commanded Texas to grant “race a leading significance.” Ouch.
Notably, the Court has concluded that this limitation pertaining to maps which predominantly lean on race can be discovered in the Constitution itself, not within federal legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. Therefore, even supposing the Supreme Court weakens the Voting Rights Act, as is anticipated to occur during its present session, such an event will not invalidate the panel’s determination in LULAC.
Significant Texas state officers, furthermore, seem to have endorsed the DOJ’s appeal for the redrawing of the state’s maps grounded in racial considerations. According to Brown’s writing, “even though the Trump White House’s appeal to redistrict for political purposes failed to gain traction rapidly, the Administration’s demand that Texas redistrict considering racial aspects realized swift outcomes.” Merely two days after the DOJ dispatched its formal communication, “Governor Abbott released a proclamation, integrating the subsequent item into the agenda for the imminent special legislative convocation: ‘Legislation that stipulates a revised congressional redistricting strategy in light of constitutional reservations voiced by the U.S. Department of Justice.’”
In different words, Abbott explicitly convened the state legislative body to adhere to the Justice Department’s injunction for a racial gerrymander.
Additional indications exist that race strongly influenced the recent redistricting within Texas. Abbott communicated to CNN’s Jake Tapper, as an instance, that the maps were undergoing redrafting for the intent of eliminating districts wherein Black and Hispanic voters collectively constituted the majority and substituting them with seats that “ended up offering more positions for Hispanics.” Brown’s determination further quotes state lawmakers who signaled their alignment with the DOJ’s racial objectives.
The paradox found within this determination is that, had Texas enacted the very equivalent maps lacking emphasis on the subject of race, the maps would have been permissible under prevailing Supreme Court standards. The Trump administration undermined its distinct redistricting endeavor by presenting Texas with a racial rationale to validate this gerrymander. In addition, Texas officials further ruined the gerrymander through embracing the DOJ’s racial rhetoric.
The three-judge group’s verdict in LULAC shall be appealed directly to the Supreme Court; hence, it persists as undetermined if the justices will concur that the Texas maps operate illegitimately. Nevertheless, an authentic potential looms where even this Supreme Court may align with the group’s adjudication to nullify them. The Court reaffirmed that maps granting “race a leading significance” maintain constitutional questionable nature as lately as 2024.
What led to the Justice Department’s blunder with Texas’s gerrymander?
To attain an understanding of the group’s adjudication in LULAC, it might prove beneficial to initially comprehend some of the historical backdrop pertaining to voting rights legislation operating within the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which holds jurisdiction over the majority of federal legal actions emerging from Texas.
In Campos v. City of Baytown (1988), the Fifth Circuit concluded that the federal Voting Rights Act occasionally mandates that states draft “coalition districts.” These represent districts wherein a composite of at least two non-white racial groups establish the majority, yet where no singular group constitutes the singular majority. As an example, a district characterized by 30 percent Black inhabitants, 30 percent Hispanic inhabitants, and 40 percent white inhabitants embodies a coalition district given that the combination of the two demographics comprised of persons of color sums up to over 50 percent of the district’s electorate.
The Fifth Circuit has, however, recently superseded Campos via Petteway v. Galveston County (2024), which determined that the Voting Rights Act “does not authorize separately protected minority factions to pool their populations to make a claim of vote weakening.” Conversly, subsequent to Petteway, Texas is no longer subjected to an affirmative compulsion to draft coalition districts.
The Justice Department’s communication in July, however, misconstrued Petteway to assert that “‘coalition districts’ trespass against the [sic] Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment.” Hence, grounded within the DOJ’s misinterpretation of Petteway, Texas exists as forbidden from enacting any congressional map encompassing a district wherein white individuals constitute the minority and wherein the composite of at least two non-white racial groups constitute the majority.
But such a perception remains incorrect. As Judge Brown drafts within the LULAC written determination, “notwithstanding that federal courts operating within this Circuit can no longer compel a legislative assembly to generate a coalition district” subsequent to Petteway, “that does not preclude such an assembly from voluntarily establishing a coalition district considering political objectives or divergent race-neutral reasons.” Legislation has the capacity to forbid Texas from willfully drafting coalition districts on account of the state’s desire to group specific racial factions jointly; however, legislation fails to forbid any map incidentally encompassing a district wherein two non-white racial factions establish the majority.
Crucially, moreover, Brown’s written determination detects that Texas did not bring into existence the coalition districts found within its pre-2025 maps in response to efforts aimed at attaining some type of racial objective. “[N]othing contained within the present recording indicates that the Legislature drafted the 2021 Map exhibiting consideration towards the generation of coalition districts,” Brown drafts. The coalition districts which indeed surfaced within that map reveal themselves to function as “coincidental by-products resulting from the Legislature’s practice of applying race-neutral redistricting standards similar to partisanship.”
Therefore, by way of summary: The Justice Department misinterpreted Petteway to forbid any congressional map encompassing a district wherein the composite of at least two non-white racial groups constitutes the majority. Subsequently, it insisted that Texas revise its maps to eradicate such districts, despite the Supreme Court’s longstanding directive that states are not to grant “race a leading significance” when in the process of drafting legislative maps. In addition, high-ranking Texas state officials appear to have adopted the Justice Department’s misinterpretation of the legislation with the goal of justifying the novel gerrymandered maps.
Once more, what will occur when this case makes its way to the Supreme Court is yet to be determined. Nonetheless, a legitimate likelihood lingers indicating that Texas’s gerrymander shall collapse entirely on account of clumsy legal representation acted out by Trump’s Justice Department.
Source: vox.com
