The Brief
A group of plaintiffs has filed a new legal challenge against the Texas congressional map enacted in a 2025 special session.
The lawsuit claims the new map is an unconstitutional gerrymander that dilutes the voting power of communities of color.
A federal court has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, August 27, to consider a motion to block the map from being used.
AUSTIN, Texas - The plaintiff group, supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), initiated a legal challenge against the newly enacted congressional gerrymander in Texas in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking the court to strike it down on several grounds.
The challenge was filed as a supplemental complaint in the ongoing lawsuit, LULAC v. Abbott.
The NRF is directing litigation and providing financial support on behalf of the Gonzales plaintiff group in this case.
Congressional map lawsuit
The backstory
Following the 2020 Census, Texas was the only state to gain two congressional seats due to significant population growth. The census data also showed that between 2010-2020, 95% of the state’s population growth came from communities of color.
Despite this, in 2021, the state of Texas enacted a congressional map that reduced the number of districts where voters of color have a fair chance to elect candidates of their choice and increased the number of majority-white districts.
The NRF filed a lawsuit, initially named Voto Latino v. Scott. This case, now called Gonzales v. Nelson, was later combined with the existing lawsuit LULAC v. Abbott to challenge the 2021 Texas congressional map. The lawsuit alleges that the map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race.
Just two months after the trial in the case against the 2021-enacted map, at the request of President Trump, Governor Greg Abbott called for an August special session in the Texas Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map.
Coming out of the 2025 special legislative session, the State of Texas enacted a new congressional map that some say goes even further to diminish the voting power of communities of color.
Plaintiffs' claims
Dig deeper
In a supplemental complaint, the plaintiffs make several claims against the 2025-enacted Texas congressional gerrymander, including the following:
Intentional Vote Dilution
They claim the new map was drawn with discriminatory intent in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Racial Gerrymandering
They further claim that several congressional districts on the new map are racially gerrymandered and in violation of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Those districts are TX-9, TX-18, TX-22, TX-27, TX-30, and TX-35.
Malapportionment
The plaintiff also claims that the State of Texas used five-year-old data to draw the new congressional map and that the new map fails to account for shifts in Texas’s population.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
The NRF-supported plaintiffs claim that the newly enacted Texas congressional map fails to include at least six additional Latino opportunity districts, in which Latino voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.
According to the NRF, in order to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Latino voters in Texas should see one additional opportunity district in the Dallas–Fort Worth metro area, one additional opportunity district in Harris County, two additional opportunity districts in Central Texas, and two additional opportunity districts in the Rio Grande Valley.
Stating that the new maps are "gerrymandered" since they do not include any of these districts.
Unnecessary Mid-Decade Redistricting
The NRF also states that the new map violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, because the Texas Legislature considered racial information and pursued a partisan advantage in an unnecessary mid-decade redraw.
NRF Statement
What they're saying
Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF, issued the following statement:
"What’s happening in Texas underscores that racially discriminatory voting practices, unfortunately, remain alive and well to this day, and the courts must continue to enforce voting rights protections. Texas’s existing map already dilutes the voting power of communities of color, which now make up 60 percent of the statewide population in the Lone Star State, and has been the subject of ongoing litigation. In spite of that, the state has doubled down with an even more extreme racial gerrymander that goes even further to pack and crack communities of color and minimize the number of congressional districts where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their choice. The court has already agreed to consider expediting this case, and we are confident that justice will be delivered for Texans."Hearing Set
Hearing set
What's next
Prior to the enactment of the new congressional maps, the NRF filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas asking the court to quickly set a hearing for a preliminary injunction that will be filed in order to block the enactment of a new gerrymandered congressional map.
The court has scheduled a conference to hear arguments on that motion for Wednesday, August 27, in El Paso, Texas.
The Source
Information in this article was provided by a press release from the National Redistricting Foundation.
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