In a victory for fair representation, Texas’ mid-decade racial gerrymander of its congressional map has been struck down. In a court ruling on Tuesday, a panel of federal judges ordered Texas to use the map passed in 2021 for the 2026 midterms instead of the map passed this summer.
This past summer, Governor Greg Abbott began an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of the state’s congressional seats under the direction of President Donald Trump. Abbott and the Texas legislature followed the advice of Trump’s Department of Justice to racially gerrymander the Texas map.
Common Cause quickly denounced this effort as a short-sighted power grab, citing that the struck-down map targeted minority communities in major Texas cities, dividing and diluting Black and Latino neighborhoods to weaken their voting power in the pursuit of five more Republican seats. The court agreed the map was an illegal racial gerrymander. In U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown’s opinion, he wrote: “Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
How a Trump Policy Priority was Defeated in Deep Red Texas
SB 16 could easily have sailed through the Texas Legislature. Instead, we kept it from becoming law.
Lots of factors contributed to the death of SB 16. One of the biggest factors: you! Thanks to months of hard work and tireless advocacy from Common Cause members like you, along with the hundreds of coalition partners, activists, and supporters of voting rights who showed up at committee hearings, sent emails, made calls, and spread the word across social media.
