By Louise Radnofsky and Elizabeth Findell

A divided three-judge panel has blocked the use of a new Texas congressional map that was designed at the request of President Trump to add as many as five new Republican House seats ahead of next year's midterm elections.

In a 2-1 ruling, a federal court in El Paso granted a preliminary injunction preventing the state from using the new map, ordering instead that midterm races in 2026 proceed with districts the Texas legislature enacted in 2021. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state would appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ruling on Tuesday came after a multiday hearing in October to weigh the district lines approved by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature and Abbott over the summer. Those lines had prompted a bitter tussle that included state House Democrats fleeing to blue states to scuttle the first of two special legislative sessions to do so.

The unusual mid-decade redistricting effort drew protests from Democrats and touched off a tit-for-tat national redistricting arms race that led to California's Proposition 50. The California proposition, approved this month to counter the Texas move by adding five new Democrat-leaning congressional districts, is now being challenged in court by the Trump administration's Justice Department.

A quick appeal will give the Supreme Court the last word on which maps the state uses for next year's midterms. The window for 2026 congressional candidates to file their paperwork in Texas is already open, and closes Dec. 8.

Judges David Guaderrama and Jeffrey Brown, appointed by President Obama and Trump, respectively, ruled to block the map. A third judge, the Reagan-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith, dissented.

"Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map," wrote Brown, in an opinion joined by Guaderrama. They pointed in particular to Texas responding to orders from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to redraw districts, "a threat based entirely on their racial makeup."

The injunction was sought by the League of United Latin American Citizens advocacy group and others, who had argued that the map violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Latino and Black voters, and was unconstitutional because it intentionally discriminated against voters based on their race.

"In more than two decades handling voting rights cases and teaching them to students, I have not seen a modern case with this strong of evidence, " said Chad Dunn, who argued the case for the challengers.

The judges said that Texas leaders initially were reluctant to redistrict, but "when the Trump administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board."

Texas previously said the state didn't consider race in redrawing its congressional map after the 2020 census, and that it was instead responding to Democratic-led states' "extreme partisan gerrymandering."

"As the largest Republican-led state, Texas is spearheading this effort by redrawing its Congressional maps to help maintain a Republican majority in the United States Congress," Texas officials told the court in a filing.

The ruling cited Abbott on several occasions saying that his motivation for requesting the redistricting was to address the Justice Department's racial concerns.

On Tuesday, Abbott said politics was his motivation. "The Legislature redrew our congressional maps to better reflect Texans' conservative voting preferences -- and for no other reason," he said in a news release.

Spokespeople for Texas Republican legislators and the Justice Department didn't immediately return requests for comment.

The Cook Political Report has estimated the redistricting pushes -- including Texas' -- could allow Republicans to add to their three-seat House majority with another three or four seats.

New maps favoring the GOP more heavily have also passed in North Carolina and Missouri, while an effort to redraw in favor of Democrats is moving forward in Virginia. A bipartisan Ohio redistricting commission approved a map that could help Republicans pick up a seat or two, while, in Utah, a new court-ordered map will allow Democrats to pick up a seat.

A monthslong effort by Trump to persuade Indiana lawmakers to draw new congressional district lines, though, was stalling ahead of the court's ruling in Texas, drawing the president's ire. Republicans in Kansas have also resisted pressure to draw new districts.

The political tussle for control over the House of Representatives is playing out amid a yearslong legal battle over how to consider race in the construction of congressional districts in the 21st century. The Justice Department is arguing that in California, legislators relied too heavily on race in creating the new electoral lines.

Earlier this fall, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought by self-described "non-African American" voters in Louisiana arguing their state went too far in considering race when drawing electoral lines to create an additional Black-majority district. There, several conservatives on the court signaled they thought that creating race-based congressional districts to ensure the election of minority-backed lawmakers might no longer be justified.

Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Elizabeth Findell at elizabeth.findell@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 18, 2025 15:02 ET (20:02 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.