A panel of federal judges has ruled that Texas’s newly redrawn congressional districts cannot be used in next year’s 2026 midterm elections, striking a blow to Republican efforts to tilt races in their favour.

On Tuesday, a two-to-one majority at the US District Court for western Texas blocked the map, on the basis that there was “substantial evidence” to show “that Texas racially gerrymandered” the districts.

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Partisan gerrymandering has generally been considered legal under court precedent, but dividing congressional maps along racial lines is considered a violation of the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics,” the court’s majority wrote in the opening of its 160-page opinion.

The ruling marked a major setback to efforts to redraw congressional districts ahead of the critically important midterms, which decide the composition of the US Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs in that election. With Republicans holding a narrow 219-seat majority, analysts speculate that control of the chamber could potentially switch parties.

Texas, a Republican stronghold, had kicked off a nationwide race to redesign congressional districts in favour of one party or the other.

In June, news reports emerged that the administration of President Donald Trump had reached out to state officials to redraw the red state’s map, in order to gain five additional House seats for Republicans.

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Despite hesitations and a walkout by state Democrats, the Texas legislature passed a new, gerrymandered map in August.

That inspired other right-leaning states, notably North Carolina and Missouri, to similarly redraw their districts. North Carolina and Missouri each passed a map that would gain Republicans one additional House seat.

Texas’s actions also sparked a Democratic backlash. California Governor Gavin Newsom spearheaded a ballot campaign in his heavily blue state to pass a proposition in November that would suspend an independent districting commission and instead pass a partisan map, skewed in favour of Democrats.

Voters passed the ballot initiative overwhelmingly in November, teeing up Democrats to gain five extra seats in California next year.

The state redistricting battle has sparked myriad legal challenges, including the one decided in Texas on Tuesday.

In that case, civil rights groups accused the Texas government of attempting to dilute the power of Black and Hispanic voters.

Judges David Guaderrama, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and Jeffrey V Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority decision in favour of the plaintiffs.

A third judge — Jerry Smith, appointed under Ronald Reagan — dissented from their decision.

Writing for the majority, Brown said that Trump official Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four congressional districts in the state were “unconstitutional” because they had non-white majorities.

The letter Dhillon sent containing that assertion helped prompt the Texas redistricting fight, Brown argued.

The judge also pointed to statements Texas Governor Greg Abbott made, seeming to reference the racial composition of the districts. If the new map’s aims were purely partisan and not racial, Brown indicated that it was curious no majority-white districts were targeted.

Tuesday’s ruling restores the 2021 map of Texas congressional districts. Currently, the state is represented by 25 Republicans and 12 Democrats in the US House.

Already, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to appeal the ruling before the US Supreme Court.

“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas,” Paxton wrote in a statement posted to social media.

He expressed optimism about his odds before the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. “I fully expect the Court to uphold Texas’s sovereign right to engage in partisan redistricting.”

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California’s new congressional map likewise faces a legal challenge, with the Trump administration suing alongside state Republicans.