LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday granted a stay of a district court order that had blocked Texas’ mid-decade congressional redistricting plan, clearing the way for the new map to be used in the 2026 elections.
The ruling comes in MALDEF’s challenge to Texas’ unprecedented and unlawful attempt to redraw congressional district lines rather than use maps that Texas drew in 2021, 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. On Nov. 18, a U.S. district court panel of three judges blocked the maps from being used in the upcoming Texas primaries. In its order, the trial court concluded that the plaintiffs would be able to prove at trial that Texas had racially gerrymandered the maps.
MALDEF was in the midst of a legal battle challenging Texas’ 2021 congressional maps, arguing that those maps 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.
Please attribute the following statement to Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel:
“Today, the Supreme Court provided yet another incentive for guerilla tactics in the voting rights realm by signaling electoral line drawers nationwide that they should delay drawing maps until the very last possible moment; by doing so, they can avoid any complete and fair analysis of the legality of their lines, and secure a shadow-docket decision overly deferential to such irresponsible line-drawing. Unfortunately, the main victims of this guerilla tactic are nothing less than justice, fairness, and democracy.
“The stated views in the concurring opinion are even more troubling, reflecting the perverse view that racial skew in partisan adherence is somehow permanent and immutable, and elevating the importance of a proffered alternative map to talismanic status. With respect to the first, history shows that racial minorities’ party preferences do change over time; thus, any party that refuses to adjust its views, as should occur in a democracy, to attract more adherence from significant minority voting communities should not be rewarded for such racially-tinged recalcitrance in federal jurisprudence. With respect to the latter, the concurring justices fail to see an obvious distinction between the ordinary redistricting context at turn of the decade when the current map is outdated, malapportioned, and legally unusable, and the context for mid-decade redistricting when the current map – the 2021 map in Texas, for example – remains properly apportioned and serviceable for the imminent election.”
“Today’s occurrence proves yet again that reform of the shadow docket is imperative. Every misuse of it further undermines democracy and the rule of law.”
Please attribute the following statement to Nina Perales, MALDEF vice president of litigation and lead counsel for LULAC:
“We will continue to challenge the Texas redistricting plans, both at the U.S. Supreme Court and in the trial court, with the goal that all Texas voters have a real chance to elect their representatives.”
Read the order HERE.