Supreme Court Allows California To Use New Congressional Maps Likely Netting Democrats Five Seats in Coming Midterms

The Supreme Court will allow California to use Democrats’ new congressional maps for the 2026 midterms after Governor Gavin Newsom pushed to gerrymander his state in response to Republican states’ redistricting efforts. Last year, Justice Samuel Alito hinted that Mr. Newsom’s new map would likely survive the court’s scrutiny. In an unsigned order Wednesday, the court announced that it would not grant plaintiffs’ request for an injunction. The lawsuit seeking to strike down the new maps was filed by a state assemblyman shortly after California voters approved the redistricting effort in a statewide ballot initiative. The California gerrymander came just months after Texas Republicans gerrymandered their state after President Trump said he was “entitled” to five extra congressional seats, considering he won the Lone Star State in 2024. Lawmakers at Austin also redrew their maps to net five seats for the GOP. In a brief statement last year accompanying an order allowing the Texas maps to be used, Justice Alito wrote that the Texas map is clearly a partisan — not racially motivated — effort. Such gerrymandering is permissible under the court’s precedent, he wrote. “[T]he impetus for the adoption” of Texas’s maps “was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Justice Alito wrote. He was joined in that statement by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch. He specifically name-checked California, highlighting that the new maps there, similarly, were adopted with the intent of partisan advantage. He says partisanship was used in Texas like the map “subsequently adopted in California.”The redistricting war kicked off by Mr. Trump last year seems to be at a stalemate for the time being, though. Democrats could pull ahead and net more seats for their party in the House. The five Texas seats now drawn to be more Republican rely heavily on Hispanic voters sticking with the GOP the same way they did in 2024, though recent special election results — including a state senate race in the Dallas-Forth Worth area that saw a more than 30-point swing toward the Democrats — suggest that may not be the case anymore. Three of the five gerrymandered Texas districts are conceivably in play, given the heavily Hispanic populations within those districts. Mr. Trump — seemingly in the hopes of getting him to become a Republican — also recently pardoned one of the House Democrats that Republicans are seeking to draw out of his seat. Congressman Henry Cuellar said after he was pardoned for corruption charges, for which he never went to trial, that he would stay a Democrat. In an effort to pad their margins even further, Republicans, led by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, went searching in other red states for additional House seats in response to California’s threats of retaliation. The GOP has eliminated one Democratic seat in Missouri, shifted two Democratic seats in the GOP’s favor in Ohio, and made one North Carolina district slightly more red. Democrats in Virginia and Maryland, meanwhile, are planning to strike back against Republicans. Governor Abigail Spanberger and legislative leaders are considering eliminating as many as four GOP congressional seats in Virginia, while Governor Wes More is pressing his state senate to eliminate Maryland’s lone GOP House seat.

Supreme Court Allows California To Use New Congressional Maps Likely Netting Democrats Five Seats in Coming Midterms

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