The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court this week to halt California’s use of a new congressional map that would wipe out multiple GOP-held seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
The California GOP filed an emergency petition to the high court earlier this week, asking the Supreme Court to halt the use of the new congressional map temporarily, which was approved by Golden State voters last November, arguing it is an unlawful racial gerrymander. The DOJ threw its support behind the California Republican Party’s petition, saying in a filing to the high court on Thursday that the new map “suffers from a fatal constitutional flaw” of a racially gerrymandered district.
“The mapmaker himself confirmed as much. In public statements, he candidly admitted that he drew district boundaries to ‘ensure that the Latino districts’ are ‘bolstered in order to make them most effective, particularly in the Central Valley,’ i.e., where District 13 is located,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the filing.
“The mapmaker’s statements are direct evidence that race, not politics, predominated in the drawing of District 13,” the brief added.
The Supreme Court previously allowed Texas to use its new congressional map, which was redrawn to net the GOP up to five additional seats, by halting a lower court’s ruling that found it an unlawful racial gerrymander. The high court claimed the lower court made “at least two serious errors” striking down the Texas map, including by not allowing an alternative map to be drawn and by failing “to honor the presumption of legislative good faith by construing ambiguous direct and circumstantial evidence against the legislature.”
The Justice Department argues in its brief that the challenge to the California map is strong enough to require the map to be discarded, pointing to direct evidence that race was a decisive factor when drawing the 13th District and that the DOJ has provided three alternative maps, “each of which achieved California’s stated partisan goals for District 13 without ‘separating its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race.’”
“Of course, California’s motivation in adopting the [Proposition] 50 map as a whole was undoubtedly to counteract Texas’s political gerrymander. But that overarching political goal is not a license for district-level racial gerrymandering. A map still reflects a racial gerrymander when race is used ‘as a proxy’ for ‘political interests’ or ‘to advance other goals,’” the DOJ brief said.
“That is plainly what occurred in District 13. And because respondents do not contend that California can satisfy strict scrutiny, applicants have clearly established that they are likely to succeed on the merits,” the brief continued.
The California GOP requested that the Supreme Court rule on its emergency petition by Feb. 9, the start of the candidate filing deadline for the 2026 election. The Supreme Court requested a response from California officials regarding the petition by Jan. 29 at 4 p.m. ET.
CALIFORNIA GOP ASKS SUPREME COURT TO BLOCK HOUSE MAP AHEAD OF MIDTERM ELECTIONS
If the California map is allowed to be used in the 2026 election, it would net Democrats up to five seats in the House, effectively neutralizing the gains that the GOP is likely to net with the redrawn Texas map.
The petition comes as the Supreme Court is slated to issue a ruling that could decide the fate of race-based redistricting challenges in Louisiana v. Callais. A ruling in the Callais case is expected in the coming months, following oral arguments held in October 2025.