Federal Court Blocks Texas’ Republican-Friendly Congressional Map

A federal court in Texas on Tuesday blocked the state’s newly redrawn and Republican-friendly congressional map from going into effect in the 2026 midterm elections, dealing a blow to an effort by Texas Republicans and President Trump to flip Democratic seats in the state.

The panel of three federal judges in El Paso, in a 2-to-1 decision, sided with civil rights groups that had sued to invalidate the map, which was part of Texas’s aggressive mid-decade push to draw new congressional boundaries at Mr. Trump’s behest.

“The Court orders that the 2026 congressional election in Texas shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021,” the court said, issuing a preliminary injunction barring the use of the map drawn this summer.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who directed state legislators to redraw the congressional map this summer, quickly said the state would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Texas files an emergency application, asking the court to clear the way for the map, it would be likely to go first to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., one of the court’s conservatives, because he is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from that region of the country. He would also be likely to be the justice who sets a briefing schedule for the case and who could issue a brief pause, called an “administrative stay,” meant to give the full court time to consider the case.

In the Texas court’s 160-page opinion written by Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019, the judges found that “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” The court cited a July letter from the Justice Department to Texas lawmakers, focused on the racial makeup of districts, in which federal prosecutors said the state’s 2021 map was unconstitutional because it included districts where no ethnic group had an outright majority. The court said that was a “legally incorrect assertion.”