Federal hearing on new Texas congressional map begins Wednesday in El Paso

DALLAS — A federal hearing to determine the legality of new congressional district boundaries designed to net Republicans up to five Texas seats in the House of Representatives begins Wednesday in El Paso.

A coalition of plaintiffs is arguing that the new maps sought by President Donald Trump and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott are unconstitutional because they discriminate against minority voters. Texas officials contend the maps were drawn with politics in mind, not race.

The hearing, which is essentially a trial, takes place just weeks before the Nov. 8 opening of the candidate filing period for the 2026 midterm elections. Plaintiffs want the court to issue an injunction against the boundaries before the filing period expires Dec. 8.

The hearing doesn’t mean the court will act on an injunction before the March midterm election primaries, but voting rights activists are hopeful. If there is an injunction, candidates would run under the old congressional boundaries, or the court could draw interim maps.

It’s unlikely the three-judge panel is the last legal stop for the case. It’s possible the lawsuit will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, analysts say.

The El Paso hearing is a critical junction in a fast-paced redistricting battle that started this summer and included a quorum break by House Democrats to stall passage of the map.

Of the five seats that Trump and Texas Republicans hope to flip from Democrat to Republican, one is in North Texas.

“An injunction is the only hope the plaintiffs have in overturning the new boundaries,” said Michael Adams, a professor of public affairs at Texas Southern University.

He said it’s become increasingly difficult to block Republican-driven redistricting plans in Texas, adding the plaintiffs, including the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Texas NAACP, have an uphill battle.

“The political world will be attuned to what’s going on in El Paso,” Adams said.

Robert Weiner, director of the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue the new congressional boundaries were developed based on race and dilute the electoral power of minority voters.

“That would make it unconstitutional because you cannot intentionally discriminate, even if your goal is in part to gain partisan advantage,” said Weiner, whose group represents the Texas NAACP. “You can’t do that by intentionally discriminating based on race.”

Critics of the new boundaries say they are a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution.

“It is clear that the state grossly violated the constitutional restrictions on racial gerrymandering, that the map that they drew systematically harms African Americans and Hispanics and other minorities,” said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, which is providing support for one of the plaintiffs. “It was done with intent, and it’s important that that be proven, and when it is proven, then this map will be blocked.”

Angle said he hoped the court would act before the deadline to file for the March primaries.

“There’s no justice in delay,” Angle said. “Voters deserve to know what districts they’re going to run under and they deserve relief from this racist map.”

Officials at Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not return an email or telephone call seeking comment for this story. Paxton has filed a reply to the arguments presented by plaintiffs.

“Even a cursory look at Texas redistricting history shows that it can be as politically hard-nosed as anywhere,” Paxton’s team wrote in the court filing. “Moreover, Texas’s recent history belies the conclusion that minorities are still subject to the consequences of the invidious racial discrimination of Texas’ past.”

Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesman for Abbott, said “the governor fully expects these maps to withstand judicial scrutiny.”

According to court filings, Abbott and Paxton are not on the same page, though they agree the maps are not discriminatory.

Texas lawmakers embarked on the rare mid-decade redistricting process after Trump indicated he wanted the Legislature to redraw congressional lines.

Trump had a political motive. Historically the party that controls the White House takes heavy congressional losses during midterm elections. Trump wants Republicans to maintain control of Congress after 2026 so he can continue to implement his agenda.

Abbott made congressional redistricting an agenda item for this summer’s first special legislative session after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, sent him and Paxton a letter warning that four of the state’s majority-minority congressional districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered. In 2021 lawmakers said the Texas maps were drawn with a color-blind approach. They testified as much during a May trial in El Paso on those 2021 maps.

Three of the four districts cited by the DOJ are held by Black or Latino representatives. The other seat is vacant and previously held by Sylvester Turner, a pioneering Black politician who died in March.

In announcing the special session, Abbott wrote he was putting congressional redistricting on the call “in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Plaintiffs are using Abbott’s embrace of the Justice Department letter as evidence of “racial gerrymandering.”

“Governor Abbott seized on it, called for a special session on redistricting expressly to address the letter’s ‘constitutional concerns,’” according to a filing by the Brooks, LULAC and Mexican American Legislative Caucus plaintiffs. “He then went on television repeatedly saying that the multiracial majority districts needed to be eliminated — the very districts he defended in this case as drawn blind to race — and that the new map would create a host of single-race majority districts.”

In a filing submitted to the court Monday lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote “the overwhelming racial justification proffered by Governor Abbott and legislators renders the map unconstitutional, including if the state used race as a proxy for partisanship.”

In Paxton’s response to the lawsuit filed with the El Paso court, he said concerns raised by the Justice Department were a “mistake” and that using the Justice Department’s letter about the 2021 maps was “political cover” for a partisan goal.

“The 2021 Map (sic) was not drawn with racially discriminatory intent,” according to Paxton’s court filing. “But that point is irrelevant here. A mistake of fact by a Washington official about the record of a case from which DOJ withdrew does not translate into racial motive on the part of the Texas Legislature.”

The filing goes on to say “a legislative act based on a mistake — or that cite (sic) a Washington official’s mistake as political cover for lawful political redistricting — remains a valid legislative act.”

Abbott’s office clarified his position on the Justice Department letter and Paxton’s filing in a statement to The Dallas Morning News.

“To be clear, the governor has never believed or suggested that the Trump Justice Department’s letter was ‘a poor and legally unsound attempt to provide political cover for Texas to redistrict mid-decade.’” Mahaleris said. “Instead, the DOJ has made clear that new precedent broadened state authority over redistricting. In line with that guidance, the Texas Legislature acted swiftly to draw congressional maps that better reflect the voting preferences of Texans.”

Last week Abbott told the El Paso court he had a lawyer independent of Paxton.

The new congressional boundaries would eliminate one Democratically held seat each from Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and the Austin/San Antonio area.

District lines were redrawn in South Texas, pushing two seats currently held by Democrats toward stronger Republican majorities, according to an analysis based on 2024 election results.

The new lines further condenses some urban Democratic strongholds and created two majority Black districts — Congressional District 30, currently represented by Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, and Congressional District 18 in Houston, a vacant seat that was represented by Turner until his death in March. The plan also added a majority Hispanic district.

In North Texas, District 32, once a Democratic stronghold represented by U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, was made a heavily Republican district that stretches from north and east Dallas County to East Texas.