Court battle begins over California’s new congressional map

LOS ANGELES — The fight over California’s new congressional map designed to help Democrats flip a string of U.S. House seats kicked off in court Monday, where a panel of federal judges is considering whether the rejiggered districts approved by voters last month can be used in elections.

The hearing in Los Angeles sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political fight between the Trump administration and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been eyeing a 2028 presidential run. The lawsuit asks a three-judge panel to grant a temporary restraining order blocking the new map by Dec. 19 — the date candidates can take the first official steps to run in the 2026 elections when GOP control of the House will be in play.

Voters approved California’s new House map in November in so-called Proposition 50. It’s designed to help Democrats flip as many as five seats in the midterm elections. It was Newsom’s response to a Republican-led effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump.

The showdown between the nation’s two most populous states has spread nationally, with efforts aiming to determine which party controls Congress for the second half of Trump’s term. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted new district lines that could provide a partisan advantage.

Some plans are facing legal challenges, but the Supreme Court ruled earlier this month to allow Texas to use its new map for the 2026 election. The Justice Department has only sued California.

The Justice Department, joining a case brought by the California Republican Party, has accused California of gerrymandering its map in violation of the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters. Republicans want the court to prohibit California from using the new map. Voters approved the map for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. State Democrats said they’re confident the lawsuit will fail.

“In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Newsom’s spokesperson Brandon Richards said in a statement. “That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

The lawsuit cites a news release from state Democrats that says the new map “retains and expands Voting Rights Act districts that empower Latino voters” while making no changes to Black majority districts in the Oakland and Los Angeles areas. The federal Voting Rights Act, passed in the 1960s, sets rules for drawing districts to ensure minority groups have adequate political power. The lawsuit also cites a Cal Poly Pomona and Caltech study that concludes the new map would increase Latino voting power.

“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50 — the recent ballot initiative that junked California’s pre-existing electoral map in favor of a rush-job rejiggering of California’s congressional district lines,” the lawsuit said.

The Justice Department alleges that Paul Mitchell, a redistricting consultant who drew the map for Democrats, and state leaders admitted that they redrew some districts to have a Latino majority.

The hearing began with a dense, technical discussion spotlighting how one of the districts — the 13th, in the state’s Central Valley — was designed, touching on issues like the Hispanic voting age population, census population blocks and different software used manage and massage the data.

“Race was the predominant interest in drawing the district,” elections analyst Sean Trende, called by the plaintiffs, told the judges. He pointed to a thumb-like appendage jutting out of the northern end of the new district, which he characterized as a precise knife cut to capture certain voters.

Defense attorneys picked away at his analysis, questioning in part whether political shifts in the region could have dictated how lines were drawn rather than racial considerations. At one point Trende acknowledged that the thumb-like bump in the district boundary was not as extreme as congressional maps seen in other states.

New U.S. House maps are drawn across the country after the Census every 10 years. Some states like California rely on an independent commission to draw maps, while others like Texas let politicians draw them. The effort to create new maps in the middle of the decade is highly unusual.

House Democrats need to gain just a handful of seats next year to take control of the chamber, which would imperil Trump’s agenda for the remainder of his term and open the way for congressional investigations into his administration. Republicans hold 219 seats, to Democrats’ 214.