Texas hit with first lawsuit challenging its mid-decade redistricting to benefit Trump

As Texas Republicans forced through their redrawing of the state’s political maps at the behest of President Donald Trump, political experts predicted the move would ignite immediate court challenges.

Turns out they were right.

Hours after the Texas Senate rubber stamped a new U.S. House map designed to give the GOP five more seats, plaintiffs filed a 67-page federal lawsuit accusing Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson of engaging in a racially engineered restructuring of the state’s voting power.

Filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso, the suit argues that House Bill 4, which created the mid-decade reshuffling, violates the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Blacks and Latinos. The plaintiffs are the same 13 voters involved in a 2021 LULAC suit challenging the state’s prior redistricting plan.

“Even a cursory look at the new districts in HB 4 confirms the obvious — that the legislature engaged in race-based districting by targeting both individual voters based on their race and particular districts based on their racial composition to dilute the vote of Black and Latino Texans,” the new suit states.

Typically, state legislatures undertake redistricting when new U.S. census data is released at the start of a decade. The suit maintains that Texas’ latest map was created using the same 2020 data used for the previous map, running afoul of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

“Even if racial and partisan considerations are an unavoidable part of redistricting, there is no need for legislatures to take those considerations into account a second time in a single decade,” the filing alleges.

Voting-right experts predict more lawsuits will follow. Count on it.

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This article appears in Aug 21 – Sep 2, 2025.