texas redistricting

Texas Enacts the 1st Mid-Decade Congressional Map Designed to Increase Republican Representation in Congress

By EditorAug 30, 2025

On August 22, the legislature adopted HB 4 in a second special session initially convened on July 21. Governor Greg Abbott signed the mid-decade congressional map on the 29th after an earlier quorum fight stalled action. The House passed the map on August 20 by a vote of 88-52, and the Senate followed on August 23 with an 18-11 vote. The enacted plan is posted by the Texas Legislative Council as "PlanC2333", with statewide PDFs and data available. Find us on:

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Mid-Decade Redistricting: Where Else Could It Happen?

By EditorAug 11, 2025

Gov. Greg Abbott put mid-decade redistricting on the agenda after Trump suggested a redraw and after a Trump-aligned DOJ letter questioned the legality of four existing districts. Texas’s special session, which convened on July 21 in part to redraw the congressional map, set off a chain reaction among states looking to counter what some say is an "unusual move," although not unprecedented. On July 30, House Republicans released a draft map that could flip the state’s delegation from 25-13 to roughly 30-8 in the GOP’s favor. Texas Democrats have fled the state to deny their Republican counterparts a quorum, and…

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A Brief History of Mid-Decade Redistricting in Texas

By EditorAug 06, 2025

A Brief History of Mid-Decade Redistricting in Texas Texas’s current mid-decade congressional redistricting effort has historical precedent. In 2003, Texas legislators undertook a similar mid-cycle redistricting that reshaped the state’s political landscape. Republicans, who had won control of both legislative chambers in the 2002 elections, launched an effort to replace the court-drawn congressional map from 2001. The legislature’s 2003 map significantly shifted the partisan composition of the Texas delegation, ultimately leading to a net gain of several Republican seats in Congress. The 2003 process drew national attention when Democratic legislators dramatically fled the state in protest, attempting to deny the…

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Texas Legislature Releases its First Congressional Map in Special Session

By EditorJul 30, 2025

Republican leaders in the Texas House have unveiled a draft congressional map for the ongoing special redistricting session, explicitly aiming to deliver up to five additional GOP seats, an outcome President Trump has publicly encouraged. Gov. Greg Abbott placed redistricting on the session’s agenda after Trump’s Department of Justice warned that portions of the current map may be unconstitutional. Still, House Republicans have acknowledged that partisan advantage is a central motive of this mid-decade redraw. The draft is still subject to amendment during the special session, and it is unclear whether additional versions will emerge. The aggressive move in Texas…

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Texas Redistricting Update: July 2025

By EditorJul 29, 2025

Governor Greg Abbott convened a 30-day special legislative session on July 21, instructing lawmakers to redraw the state’s 38 U.S. House districts. The call follows a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stating that four districts anchored in Houston and Fort Worth were "coalition districts," and may have been drawn “along strict racial lines,” (a.k.a racial gerrymanders), potentially violating the 14th Amendment. Lawmakers now have until roughly mid-August to craft new boundaries that satisfy equal-population and federal law requirements. Ongoing litigation over the 2021 mapsWhile legislators work on new boundaries, a three-judge federal panel in El Paso is…

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Tarrant County Commissioners Seek to Defend its Commissioner District Map Against Voting Rights Act and 14th Amendment Claims

By EditorJun 30, 2025

Tarrant County, Texas's Republican-led Commissioners Court is poised to vote on a new $250,000 contract with the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) so that the firm can defend the county against a federal lawsuit filed June 4 by Black and Latino voters claiming the new commissioner map dilutes Black and Latino voting strength. PILF received a $30,000 consulting fee in April to help design the map, which ultimately gives white, non-Hispanic residents, now less than half of the county’s population, majorities in three of four commissioner precincts. Read more at keranews.org Find us on:

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Supreme Court Rules on Texas Redistricting

By EditorJul 09, 2018

Texas - Abbott v. Perez This is the most protracted post-census 2010 litigation to date. The original case challenged the Texas legislatures’ 2011 redistricting maps, but the litigation now centers around a new set of congressional and state legislative maps that Texas adopted in 2013. These “new” maps are actually closely based on the maps that the federal district court overseeing the litigation drew as interim maps under the Supreme Court’s guidance after it determined the initial interim maps went beyond the limited purpose of correcting legal deficiencies in the 2011 maps. . The issue before the Supreme Court this…

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Redistrictingonline Monthly Redistricting Update (March 2017)

By EditorApr 04, 2017

Politics Roll Call interviews National Democratic Redistricting Committee Executive Director Kelly Ward about its strategy going into 2020: Watch: Inside the Democrat Party’s National Redistricting Strategy In-Depth Late in 2016, PBS’s American Law Journal gave an in-depth treatment of gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. Hosts interview lawmakers, review the technology behind redistricting and cover reform efforts: Watch: PBS Covers Pennsylvania Gerrymandering and Reform In-Depth Litigation Six years in the making, a federal district court panel released its opinion late last month in the long arduous litigation we call Texas Redistricting. We explain what that means and survey the news coverage in Texas Congressional Districts Invalidated by…

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Texas Attorney General’s Statement on Redistricting Court Ruling

By EditorMar 17, 2017

Texas - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released this statement on Monday regarding a federal district court panel's 2-1 ruling that finds several congressional districts drawn by the Texas legislature to be unconstitutional. Click here for more analysis of the case: “We respectfully disagree with the redistricting panel’s majority decision. As Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith observed in his dissent, the challenge to the old 2011 maps - which were never in effect - is moot. The maps currently in use are not the ones adopted by the Texas Legislature in 2011, which are the subject of the court’s opinion. …

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What’s Next in Texas Redistricting

By EditorMar 17, 2017

On March 10th a federal district court panel in San Antonio Texas ruled that the State legislature’s 2011 congressional redistricting map was drawn in manner that violated the U.S. constitution. The court found several districts in the map were the product of intentional racial discrimination and minority vote dilution. While the ruling was a surprise, considering the case had been drawn out for nearly six years, it was also slightly anti-climactic since the ruling referred to a map that Texas no longer uses as its congressional districts. The court had drawn an interim map in 2012 after finding that some…

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