Court Rejects GOP, DOJ Challenge, Clearing Way for Democrats to Target Five New Seats
SACRAMENTO, Calif. | A federal appeals panel on Wednesday cleared the way for California Democrats to use the state’s newly approved congressional map in the 2026 midterm elections, rejecting claims that the redistricting plan amounted to unlawful racial gerrymandering and delivering a significant legal victory for Democrats in the nation’s largest state.
In a 2–1 ruling, the judges denied a request from the California Republican Party and the U.S. Department of Justice under President Donald Trump to block the map approved by voters last November. The plan, adopted after a summer special election, was designed to create up to five additional Democratic-leaning congressional districts.
Writing for the majority, Judge Josephine Staton, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, concluded that challengers failed to meet the high bar required to halt the map before it is used in an election. Judge Wesley Hsu, appointed by President Joe Biden, joined the opinion. Judge Kenneth Lee, a Trump appointee, dissented.
“We find that Challengers have failed to show that racial gerrymandering occurred, and we conclude that there is no basis for issuing a preliminary injunction,” Staton wrote, adding that the court’s conclusion “probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news in the summer and fall of 2025.”
Partisan Motivation, Not Racial Gerrymandering
Republicans and federal attorneys argued that California Democrats violated the Constitution by redrawing districts with impermissible racial intent. Lawyers for Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee countered that the redistricting effort was explicitly partisan — a distinction that federal courts have consistently treated differently from race-based claims.
The panel agreed, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent that, earlier this month, allowed Texas’s aggressively partisan congressional map to stand.
In that ruling, the high court noted that the Texas map — “like the map subsequently adopted in California” — was driven by “partisan advantage pure and simple,” a factor the court has repeatedly said is largely beyond federal judicial review.
Political Context and National Stakes
The California redistricting fight was triggered after Trump urged Texas lawmakers to carve out five new Republican seats, prompting Democratic leaders in California to respond in kind. The resulting ballot measure, Proposition 50, passed comfortably, giving Democrats control over new boundaries in a state that already leans heavily blue.
Newsom celebrated Wednesday’s decision as both a legal and political rebuke.
“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed,” the governor said in a statement. “California voters overwhelmingly supported Prop 50 — to respond to Trump’s rigging in Texas — and that is exactly what this court concluded.”
With California holding 52 seats in the U.S. House, the decision could have an outsized impact on the battle for congressional control in 2026, particularly if Democrats successfully convert the newly drawn districts into durable wins.
Republicans or the Justice Department could still seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court. But election law experts widely view that path as a long shot, given the court’s recent refusal to intervene in the Texas case and its clear signaling that partisan gerrymandering claims fall largely outside federal oversight.
For now, the ruling effectively locks in California’s new map for the upcoming midterms — reinforcing a political reality that both parties increasingly accept: aggressive redistricting, when framed as partisan rather than racial, remains legally permissible under current Supreme Court doctrine.
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-- By Jasmine Thomas
© Copyright 2026 JWT Communications. All rights reserved. This article cannot be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten, or distributed in any form without written permission.
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