(Houston) A US federal court on Tuesday suspended the new electoral map of Texas which should allow the Republicans to win five more seats in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections in a year.
Seized by voters who considered this electoral redistribution as “discriminatory” against minorities, the court suspended the law and ordered the authorities to use the same map for the mid-term elections in November 2026 as for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
“There is significant evidence that Texas drew the 2025 map along racial lines,” he concluded.
Republicans are expected to appeal this decision.
The new electoral map of Texas was adopted in August by the Parliament of this vast conservative southern state.
President Donald Trump had publicly pressured Republican officials to carry out this redistricting, which aims to preserve his current narrow majority in Congress beyond the next legislative elections.
Sectors with a Latino or African-American majority, where Democratic candidate Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election, were thus fragmented and attached to constituencies won by the right to dilute the Democratic vote and allow the Republicans to glean up to five additional seats in Congress.
In response, the Democrats had a text approved by referendum in November intended to give them five additional seats in California, the most populous state in the country, which they largely dominate.
California Republicans, supported by the Trump administration’s Justice Department, are challenging this new division in court.
