Federal judges ruled Wednesday that California can use a new, voter-approved U.S. House district map for the 2026 election, rejecting requests by state Republicans and the U.S. Justice Department to block the map from being used in future elections.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel in Los Angeles denied the challenges. The complaint accused California of violating the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters when the new district lines were drawn.
The map is based on a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 50, which voters approved in November. The AP story said the effort was backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and is aimed at giving Democrats a chance at flipping as many as five House seats next year.
The proposal, according to the report, is part of a broader mid-decade redistricting matchup. California Democrats have sought to counter what the AP described as a Texas effort backed by President Donald Trump that was intended to help Republicans win five House seats. The report said Republicans currently hold nine of California’s 52 congressional seats.
Newsom, in a statement, said, “Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed.” Republicans vowed to appeal, with Corrin Rankin, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, saying “The well reasoned dissenting opinion better reflects our interpretation of the law and the facts, which we will reassert to the Supreme Court.”
The panel’s majority decision treated the legal basis of the map differently from the plaintiffs’ argument. The report said the California panel of judges affirmed the state’s characterization of the map as being drawn for partisan advantage, and it said there was not strong evidence that the maps were drawn based on race. In the judges’ wording, “After reviewing the evidence, we conclude that it was exactly as one would think: it was partisan.”
Judge Kenneth Lee, appointed by Trump, dissented. The AP report said Lee wrote that at least one district was drawn using race as a factor “to curry favor with Latino groups and voters.”
The ruling comes against a backdrop of recent Supreme Court decisions tied to mid-decade redistricting. The AP story said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering is a political question and not one for federal courts to decide. In December, the Supreme Court also allowed Texas to use its new map for the 2026 election because it was drawn with partisan goals, with conservative Justice Samuel Alito writing in a concurring opinion that the California map was also approved for political advantage.
While new U.S. House maps are typically drawn after the census every 10 years, the AP report said creating new maps in the middle of the decade is highly unusual. It noted that some states use independent commissions to draw maps, while others such as Texas allow politicians to do so. The AP story said the Justice Department has only sued California, and it cited other examples of states adopting new lines, including Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, as well as a judge ordering Republican-run Utah to adopt a map that creates a Democratic-leaning district.
House control in 2026 remains closely divided, the report said. It said House Democrats need to gain just a handful of seats to take control of the chamber, where Republicans currently hold a narrow margin of 218 seats to Democrats’ 213. The report said control could affect efforts to advance Trump’s agenda for the remainder of his term and could open the way for congressional investigations into his administration.