EL PASO, Texas – A federal court today issued a preliminary injunction blocking Texas from implementing its mid-cycle congressional redistricting plan, preventing the plan from taking effect for the 2026 elections.
The ruling comes in MALDEF’s challenge to Texas’ unprecedented and unlawful attempt to redraw congressional district lines mid-decade, a maneuver that racially gerrymandered Latino voters and diminished their voting power in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act.
Texas lawmakers approved the mid-decade maps in August 2025 in response to a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice urging the State to dismantle districts because of their racial makeup.
MALDEF was in the midst of a legal battle challenging Texas’ 2021 congressional maps, arguing that those maps violated the VRA and diluted the voting strength of Latino voters, when the Legislature approved the new maps. The case, LULAC v. Abbott, in which MALDEF represents LULAC as well as a coalition of Latino organizations and voters, was tried earlier this year before Texas capitulated to a demand by the Trump Department of Justice to redraw the maps.
In the court’s order, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey V. Brown concluded that the plaintiffs would be able to prove at trial that Texas had racially gerrymandered the maps.
Please attribute the following statement to Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel:
“Coerced improperly by the Trump administration, the Texas legislature sought a redrawn congressional map whose only difference from the highly partisan 2021 map — perhaps the most partisan of all state-drawn maps in 2021 — was to completely disregard the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. That is the very epitome of unconstitutional over-consideration of race. The panel majority recognized that this ham-fisted effort went too far in dismantling minority voting power on the basis of race.”
Please attribute the following statement to Nina Perales, MALDEF vice president of litigation and lead counsel for LULAC:
“The federal court, in the face of a mountain of evidence showing that Texas racially gerrymandered its new congressional redistricting map, ordered that the State should continue with its current map. The ruling will prevent Latino voters from being sliced and diced into districts solely because of their race and for the purpose of weakening their voting strength.”
Read the order HERE.