In a 160-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown wrote that the state Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott relied on a legally dubious letter from the U.S. Department of Justice in July to redraw its maps with race, not partisanship, serving as the primary force behind the gerrymander. Tuesday's ruling comes after a preliminary injunction hearing that lasted over a week in October.
"When given an opportunity to publicly proclaim that his motivation for adding redistricting to the legislative agenda was solely to improve Republicans' electoral prospects at President [Donald] Trump's request, the Governor denied any such motivation," Judge Brown wrote. "Instead, the Governor expressly stated that his predominant motivation was racial: he 'wanted to remove … coalition districts' and 'provide more seats for Hispanics.' … And the Governor consistently used language suggesting that he viewed the map's improved Republican performance not as an end in itself, but as a coincidental by-product of the plan's goal of increasing the number of majority-Hispanic districts."
In a statement released shortly after Tuesday's ruling, Abbott said that the gerrymander was purely political, not racial. He said the state would "swiftly appeal to the United States Supreme Court."
"The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences — and for no other reason," he said. "Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony offered during ten days of hearings. The ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict."
The White House began encouraging state leaders to redraw their U.S. House maps shortly after Trump took office in January, but Judge Brown said Tuesday that "by all appearances," the desire for a new partisan gerrymander was limited. When Abbott called for a special legislative session in June, redistricting wasn't on the agenda.
But Judge Brown wrote that things changed in July, when the DOJ wrote a letter to Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton detailing what the Justice Department called four "unconstitutional 'coalition' districts" where no single racial group constitutes more than 50% of the voters, but multiple minority groups together make a majority.
Shortly thereafter, Abbott added redistricting to the special session's legislative agenda, "explicitly direct[ing] the Legislature to draw a new U.S. House map to resolve DOJ's concerns," Judge Brown wrote.
But in its letter, the judge said, the DOJ had relied on a fundamental misreading of the Fifth Circuit's 2024 opinion in Petteway v. Galveston County, claiming that the en banc opinion had rendered such coalition districts illegal. Judge Brown firmly rejected the interpretation in his ruling, writing that the Petteway decision only holds that courts can't force states to create coalition districts, and doesn't make existing coalition districts unconstitutional.
"Petteway holds only that 'Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] does not require' legislatures 'to draw precinct lines for the electoral benefit of' multiracial coalitions," he said Tuesday. "Petteway nowhere implies that legislatures must deliberately avoid drawing coalition districts — or that a legislatively drawn map that happens to contain one or more coalition districts is somehow unlawful. This point is critical to this case."
Under the two-step test established in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2017 Cooper v. Harris decision, the state must prove that its "race-based sorting of voters serves a 'compelling interest' and is 'narrowly tailored to that end.'"
But Judge Brown said that the state had failed the test, because the sorting was motivated by the DOJ's misreading of Petteway.
"The DOJ's interpretation of Petteway — that VRA [Section] 2 and the Constitution render coalition districts per se unlawful — is obviously wrong," he wrote. "Thus, the State's systematic, purposeful elimination of coalition district and creation of new single-race-majority districts 'was not reasonably necessary under a constitutional reading and application of [the VRA].'"
The ruling, in which Judge Brown granted a preliminary injunction blocking the use of the new map in the 2026 congressional elections, is the latest swing in a mid-Census redistricting battle between Democratic- and Republican-controlled states. Texas' redraw, targeting five Democratic-held districts, kicked off the fight this year, prompting other states like California, Illinois and Virginia to move forward with plans to redraw their own maps.
Voting rights groups led by the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, sued to block the redistricting shortly after it was adopted in August, calling it "egregiously unconstitutional."
Roman Palomares, the organization's national president, called the decision "a victory for the people of Texas and for every voter who has the right to determine who will govern them and who will shape the laws and policies of this state."
"This decision reinforces the principle that democracy works only when every voter is counted fairly and without political interference," Ray Mancera, LULAC's vice president for the Southwest, said Monday.
The LULAC plaintiffs and other plaintiffs are represented by Nina Perales, Julia Longoria, Sabrina Rodriguez, Ernest I. Herrera and Khrystan N. Policarpio of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The Brooks plaintiffs are represented by Chad W. Dunn of Brazil & Dunn, Mark P. Gaber of Mark P. Gaber PLLC and Jesse Gaines, Molly E. Danahy and Sonni Waknin.
The Gonzales plaintiffs are represented by David R. Fox, Richard A. Medina and Abha Khanna of Elias Law Group LLP.
Texas is represented by Ken Paxton, Brent Webster, Ralph Molina, Ryan D. Walters, Ryan G. Kercher, Kathleen T. Hunker, William D. Wassdorf, David Bryant, Zachary L. Rhines, Munera Al-Fuhaid, Zachary W. Berg, Ali M. Thorburn, Kyle S. Tebo and Mark A. Csoros of the Texas Office of the Attorney General.
The case is League of United Latin American Citizens et al. v. Abbott et al., case number 3:21-cv-00259, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
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