Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a mid-decade redraw of the state’s congressional districts, capping a special-session push that Republicans say could net their party up to five additional U.S. House seats in 2026.
The move followed weeks of walkouts, marathon hearings and a pressure campaign from President Donald Trump to “lock in” more GOP-leaning districts before the midterms.
Republicans framed the overhaul as both legal and necessary, arguing the new map better reflects recent voting patterns.
Today, I signed the One Big Beautiful Map into law.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 29, 2025
This map ensures fairer representation in Congress.
Texas will be more RED in Congress. pic.twitter.com/aOT7QCoSF8
“Texas is now more red in the United States Congress,” Abbott said in a social video after signing the bill.
He thanked Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dustin Burrows, State Sen. Phil King and State Reps. Todd Hunter and Cody Vasut and “all of the legislature who stayed in the Capitol and got this law to my desk.”
Democrats counter that the plan is a textbook gerrymander that weakens the voting power of Black and Latino communities in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and along the I-35 corridor. The GOP authors reject those claims.
Compared with the current map, Trump would have carried three additional districts in 2024 and Republicans would have enjoyed stronger chances in two more that he had already won, enough to put the GOP’s target of five pickups within reach.
The plan increases the number of “packed” districts, where one racial or partisan group is concentrated, while reducing multiracial “coalition” districts. Changes result in two additional majority-Black seats, among them Houston’s Congressional District 18.
Lawsuits followed
Lawsuits landed almost immediately.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), later joined or echoed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), alleged the mid-decade redraw is unconstitutional and “intentionally discriminatory,” dismantling majority-minority districts to maximize Republican performance.
Plaintiffs argue the Legislature repurposed the same census-era data used in 2021 to revisit racial and partisan choices a second time within one decade, contrary to equal-protection guarantees and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Texas officials say the map was drawn using political, not racial, data and allows more Texans to vote for the candidate of their choice.
The Legislature’s legal footing rests on a Supreme Court landscape that, for now, distinguishes sharply between partisan and racial gerrymandering. In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), the Court declared partisan gerrymandering claims non-justiciable in federal courts, leaving such disputes largely to the political branches or state courts.
At the same time, the Court’s 2023 ruling in Allen v. Milligan reaffirmed that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can require additional opportunity districts when minority voters’ strength is unlawfully diluted, meaning the line between permissible partisanship and unlawful racial sorting still matters.
Texas Republicans also benefited from a 2024-25 shift inside the Fifth Circuit. In Petteway v. Galveston County, the court rejected “coalition” Section 2 claims that combine Black and Latino voters to establish a protected majority, narrowing one path civil-rights groups have used for decades to fight vote dilution in multiracial regions.
What happened before this?
The U.S. Department of Justice helped set this year’s scramble in motion. In a July 7 letter to state leaders, DOJ warned that four Texas districts, Congressional Districts 9 18 in Houston, 29 on the city’s East End and 33 in Dallas-Fort Worth, were “unconstitutionally race-based.”
The letter signaled fresh federal scrutiny if lawmakers did not address concerns. Republican mapmakers say the new plan responds to those issues while improving compactness, while Democrats say it doubles down on racial sorting to extract a partisan edge.
Beyond the courtroom, the stakes are national. Texas is the GOP’s biggest single opportunity to offset expected Democratic gains elsewhere. California Democrats, for example, advanced their own partisan redraw this month. With the U.S. House narrowly divided, even a handful of Texas flips could decide control in 2026.In Texas, House Bill 4, which comprises the redistricting maps, repeals the 2021 map and schedules the lines to take effect with the 2026 primaries and general election, leaving the current delegation unchanged until next year.
