Washington uses a bipartisan Redistricting Commission to draw both congressional and legislative districts. After the 2020 census, the commission missed its statutory deadline late on Nov. 15, 2021, transmitting completed plans to the state supreme court a few hours after midnight. On Dec. 3, 2021, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously declined to take over map-drawing, holding that the commission had “substantially complied” with its mandate, and allowed the commission’s congressional plan to proceed for use beginning in 2022. In February of 2022, the state legislature approved the commission's maps with minor changes as allowed by state statute.

For the state legislature, the same commission plans took effect for 2022, but a federal court later found that LD15 in the Yakima Valley violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting Latino voting power. On Aug. 10, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington invalidated LD15 and ordered a remedy (Soto Palmer v. Hobbs a.k.a. Palmer v. Trevino). On Mar. 15, 2024, the court adopted a remedial configuration (implemented in time for the 2024 elections).

The intervenors who had defended LD15 appealed both the liability finding and the remedial map to the Ninth Circuit. On August 27, 2025, a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the district court in full, holding that most intervenors lacked standing to challenge the Section 2 ruling, and that the remedial map - which replaced LD15 with a reconfigured LD14 - was not an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was not the predominant factor in its design. A separate but related case, Garcia v. Hobbs, had been filed in March 2022 by a Yakima Valley voter alleging that the original LD15 itself was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fourteenth Amendment; that case was dismissed as moot once the Soto Palmer ruling eliminated LD15, but the plaintiff appealed the mootness finding all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 2024 sent it back for a cleaner appealable order. On the same day as its Soto Palmer ruling, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that Garcia's case was indeed moot, finding the new LD14 was not simply a continuation of the old, now-eliminated LD15. Two separate petitions for certiorari are now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court: the intervenors' challenge to the Soto Palmer remedial map (No. 25-918) and Garcia's challenge to the mootness ruling (No. 25-901). Washington has argued in its brief in opposition that review of the intervenors' petition is unwarranted, while Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has separately warned that disturbing the district lines this close to the August primary would create election chaos. Separately, following the Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, Washington Democratic legislators have begun discussing whether to pursue mid-decade congressional redistricting, though no formal proposal has emerged, and the state's commission-based process would complicate any such effort. The current legislative and congressional maps remain in effect for the 2026 elections.

last updated: June 2026