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  "description": "The majority opinion found that the new maps were made through legal political gerrymandering, not illegal racial gerrymandering.",
  "path": "/court-denies-pause-on-redistricting-maps/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-01-18T14:55:01.000Z",
  "site": "https://ielaw.news",
  "tags": [
    "on Friday"
  ],
  "textContent": "A three-judge panel of the Central District of California denied a Republican request to stop the congressional maps adopted through Proposition 50.\n\nThe Jan. 14 ruling does not finalize the lawsuit. Central District Judge Kenneth Lee dissented. The Republican's immediate appeal was denied by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal on Friday.\n\nThe majority opinion found that the new maps were made through legal political gerrymandering, not illegal racial gerrymandering.\n\n\"We find that Challengers have failed to show that racial gerrymandering occurred, and we conclude that there is no basis for issuing a preliminary injunction,\" wrote Central District Judge Josephine Staton.\n\n\"Our conclusion probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news in the summer and fall of 2025. In the summer of 2025, the Trump administration began pressuring Texas to redistrict for the purpose of picking up five more Republican seats in Congress. The Texas Legislature obliged. In August 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that California would “fight back” with its own Election Rigging Response Act (“ERRA”). The stated goal of the ERRA was to counter the actions of Texas and pick up an additional five Democratic seats. The new map drawn by a private consultant, paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and incorporated into Proposition 50, met that goal exactly.\n\n\"In the roughly two and a half months between the California Legislature’s initial consideration of the ERRA and the special election on November 4, 2025, Proposition 50 and its new map were heavily debated. No one on either side of that debate characterized the map as a racial gerrymander. The California Democratic Party told voters that 'Proposition 50 proposes new lines for many of California’s 52 congressional districts, which would negate the five Republican seats drawn by Texas. Under the proposed lines, Democrats could gain up to 5 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.' Plaintiff California Republican Party urged a 'no' vote on Proposition 50, telling voters it was a 'political power grab to help Democrats retake Congress and impeach Trump.' Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi called it a 'redistricting power grab' for political gain. And Plaintiff California Assembly member David Tangipa publicly described Proposition 50 as 'partisan gerrymandering' and a 'power grab' that 'eliminate[d] five Republican districts & strengthen[ed] Democrat held seats.'\n\n\"Proposition 50 was the single issue on the ballot for the November 4 special election: the Official Voter Information Guide provided maps to the voters showing both the existing district lines and the proposed new district lines. And the pros and cons of Proposition 50 were outlined in purely political, partisan terms, with each side claiming the other was engaging in a 'power grab.' No one told the voters that the Proposition 50 Map involved racial gerrymandering. Over 7 million Californians voted 'yes' on Proposition 50, it passed by nearly a 2 to 1 margin, and the next day Plaintiffs filed their complaint in this Court.\n\n\"But the Supreme Court ruled in Rucho v. Common Cause that 'partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.' So, Challengers have abandoned the argument they made to the voters. Proposition 50, apparently, is no longer a partisan power grab. Now, it is a 'racial gerrymander.' And Challengers also tell us that, even if the voters intended to adopt the Proposition 50 Map as partisan counterweight to Texas’s redistricting, their intent does not matter, as they were simply dupes of a racially-motivated legislature.\n\n\"However, we reject the notion that voters’ intent does not matter. Instead, we employ well-understood tools to determine the voters’ intent in adopting the Proposition 50 Map, and after reviewing the evidence, we conclude that it was exactly as one would think: it was partisan. Indeed, the record contains a mountain of statements reflecting the partisan goals of Proposition 50, from which Challengers have culled a molehill of statements showing race consciousness on the part of the mapmaker and certain legislators. But that is not enough to make the necessary showing that the relevant decisionmakers— here, the electorate—enacted the new map for racial reasons.\n\nJudge Kenneth Lee, in his dissent, wrote that at least one new district was racially gerrymandered.\n\n\"We know race likely played a predominant role in drawing at least one district because the smoking gun is in the hands of Paul Mitchell, the mapmaker who drew the congressional redistricting map adopted by the California state legislature,\" Lee wrote.\n\n\"Mitchell refused to appear before our court to explain how he drew the map and invoked legislative privilege for staying silent. But before this lawsuit was filed, he publicly boasted to his political allies that he drew the map to 'ensure that the Latino districts . . . are bolstered in order to make them most effective, particularly in the Central Valley.' He also bragged on X/Twitter that the 'proposed Proposition 50 map will further increase Latino voting power' and 'adds one more Latino influence district.' True to his word, Congressional District 13 (CD 13) in the Central Valley has the hallmarks of a racially gerrymandered district: It is a majority Latino district that oddly juts out in the north to capture Latino areas—to the exclusion of more Democratic but more White areas nearby.\"\n\nStaton, in her majority opinion, wrote that the Republican plaintiffs did not show California voters approved Proposition 50 with the racial gerrymandering of District 13 in mind.\n\n\"Challengers’ evidence is insufficient to show that race predominated in passage of Proposition 50 for voters as to any district, District 13 or otherwise. The closest Challengers come to offering such evidence are the legislative debates and press releases by legislators, which were publicly available for voters to see. But Challengers’ cited legislative statements provide little support for the idea that the legislature presented the Proposition 50 Map to voters in racial, rather than partisan, terms,\" Staton wrote.",
  "title": "Court denies pause on redistricting maps",
  "updatedAt": "2026-01-18T14:55:01.799Z"
}