Justice Department Backs Texas in Redistricting Legal Battle

The Department of Justice threw its support behind Texas on Monday in a high-stakes redistricting case, arguing that the state’s Republican-led legislature did not create an unconstitutional racial gerrymander when approving a new congressional map.

Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision that blocked the map through the 2026 midterms.

“This is not a close case,” Sauer wrote in the filing, contending that the lower court misunderstood the Texas legislature’s motivations in shifting five districts to favor Republicans.

Sauer argued that the redistricting was driven by partisan objectives rather than racial considerations, which would potentially violate federal voting laws and the Constitution. “There is overwhelming evidence — both direct and circumstantial — of partisan objectives, and any inference that the State inexplicably chose to use racial means is implausible,” he stated.

The legal dispute centers on Texas’ mid-cycle redistricting efforts, which occurred after Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to the state demanding it address “coalition districts” that favor Democrats. Shortly after receiving this letter, Republican Governor Greg Abbott added redistricting to the legislature’s agenda, sparking a dramatic boycott by state Democrats who temporarily fled Texas.

Plaintiffs, including numerous voting and immigrant rights groups, have seized on Dhillon’s letter as evidence of race-based motives. They argue the DOJ letter “incorrectly asserted that these districts were ‘unconstitutional coalition districts’ that Texas was required to ‘rectify’ by changing their racial makeup.”

However, Sauer defended the letter, claiming the lower court “misinterpreted the letter’s meaning” and “misunderstood the letter’s significance to the legislature’s adoption of the 2025 map.”

The Texas redistricting battle is one of several similar disputes unfolding across the country as Republicans and Democrats jockey for advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. These contests could determine whether President Donald Trump maintains a Republican-led House of Representatives after those elections.

In a notable contrast, the DOJ recently sued California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom over that state’s redistricting efforts, arguing those changes, unlike Texas’, were unconstitutionally race-based. California had voted for a last-minute ballot measure that would effectively cancel out the five Republican gains created by the Texas map.

Texas has asked the Supreme Court to pause the three-judge panel’s ruling from the Western District of Texas, which found in a 2-1 decision that race was too significant a factor in the state’s redistricting process.

“This summer, the Texas Legislature did what legislatures do: politics,” Texas’ attorneys argued in their request, rejecting claims that race played a role in the redistricting process.

Judge Jerry Brown, a Reagan appointee and the lone dissenter on the panel, issued a scathing critique of the majority decision, calling it the “most blatant exercise of judicial activism” he had ever witnessed and a work of “fiction.”

Justice Samuel Alito has already administratively paused the panel’s ruling, but the Supreme Court could make a more permanent decision on the Texas map at any time. Texas lawyers have further argued that the high court should block the panel’s decision because it interferes with the upcoming 2026 midterms, for which candidates have already begun filing to run based on the new map.

The outcome of this case could significantly impact the balance of power in Congress following the next midterm elections and set important precedents for redistricting disputes in other states.