Federal judges on Tuesday blocked Texas from using a new congressional map intended to flip several Democratic-held U.S. House seats to Republican control in next year’s midterm elections.

The ruling by a three-judge panel was a major blow for Texas Republicans who had been urged by President Donald Trump to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts to help protect his party’s narrow U.S. House majority.

The panel, in a 2-1 decision, ruled in favor of civil rights groups that had challenged the map, finding “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered” the new map.

Judges Order Using Previous Map for 2026 Elections

The panel ordered that the 2026 congressional elections be carried out under the previous map, approved in 2021. Republicans control 25 of 38 U.S. House seats in Texas under the 2021 map.

Gerrymandering involves redrawing electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 forbade federal courts from intervening in cases involving gerrymandering done for partisan advantage. Gerrymandering predominantly driven by race remains illegal.

Trump has demanded that Republican-led states redraw their congressional maps to help his party retain House control. Texas was at the forefront of the push, with Texas Governor Greg Abbott signing the new Republican-backed map into law on August 29 with the aim of flipping as many as five Democratic-held seats.

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers had fled the state weeks earlier, temporarily preventing a vote on the map. The missing lawmakers returned after California Democrats announced a retaliatory redistricting effort.

California’s Voter-Approved Gerrymander

California reacted by initiating its own redistricting effort targeting five Republican-held districts there. California voters overwhelmingly approved a new map in the November elections.   Other states, both Republican and Democratic, have followed suit with redistricting plans or threatened to do so.

In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national census carried out once a decade. Redistricting typically is carried out by state legislatures.

Last week, the administration sued California to stop its new electoral maps from taking effect days after voters approved a ballot measure adopting the reconfigured congressional districts.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Andrew Hay. Editing by Donna Bryson and Will Dunham)