The political landscape in California is once again at the center of a fierce national debate over redistricting, as federal court hearings got underway in Los Angeles on December 15, 2025, pitting state Republicans and the Trump Justice Department against Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration. At stake is Proposition 50, a ballot measure that California voters overwhelmingly approved on November 4, 2025, with a decisive 65%-35% margin. The measure, which reconfigures California’s congressional districts, is poised to hand Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives—a move that could tilt the balance of power in Washington during the 2026 midterm elections.
The legal battle comes on the heels of a national wave of partisan gerrymandering, most notably in Texas, where Republican lawmakers redrew congressional maps to secure five more seats for their party. According to the Associated Press, California’s Prop 50 was, in part, a direct response to that effort. As Newsom’s team sees it, fair’s fair—if Texas can redraw its maps for partisan gain, why not California?
But California Republicans see things very differently. The state’s GOP filed a lawsuit the day after Prop 50 passed, seeking a restraining order to halt the implementation of the new maps before the December 19 candidate filing deadline for the 2026 elections. Their central claim is that the new districts were drawn to unconstitutionally favor Hispanic voters, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and the 15th Amendment. The Trump Justice Department quickly joined the lawsuit, arguing that “race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50—the recent ballot initiative that junked California’s pre-existing electoral map in favor of a rush-job rejiggering of California’s congressional district lines.”
The courtroom drama has drawn in dozens of California politicians and redistricting experts. Among them is Assemblymember David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno), who serves on the Assembly Elections Committee. In his testimony, Tangipa painted a picture of a rushed and opaque process. “In the language of the bill, it actually states that the Assembly and Senate election committee prepared these maps,” Tangipa said, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. “This was a lie.” He further alleged that Democratic colleagues invoked arguments about increasing Black, Latino, and Asian representation to justify the redistricting, saying, “They were forcing, through emergency action, maps upon us to dismantle the independent redistricting commission. They were using emotionally charged arguments, racial justifications and polarized arguments to pigeonhole us.”
Republican attorneys have focused much of their fire on the new Congressional District 13, which includes Merced, Stanislaus, and parts of San Joaquin and Fresno counties, as well as portions of Stockton. They called RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende to the stand, who testified that he observed an “appendage” in the new District 13. “From my experience [appendages] are usually indicative of racial gerrymandering,” Trende said. “When the choice came between politics and race, it was race that won out.” However, defense attorneys pressed Trende on whether recent shifts in Latino voting patterns toward Republican candidates might have influenced the new district boundaries, rather than race alone. They also referenced a sworn statement by Trende in the Texas redistricting case, in which he said the Prop 50 map was “drawn with partisan objectives in mind; in particular, it was drawn to improve Democratic prospects” to counteract additional Republican seats.
Paul Mitchell, the Democratic redistricting expert who drew up the maps, has become a central figure in the dispute. GOP attorneys have seized on his public comments that the “number one thing” he considered was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles” and that the “first thing” he and his team did was “reverse” the California Citizens Redistricting Commission’s earlier decision to eliminate a Latino district from L.A. Yet, as legal experts like Justin Levitt of Loyola Marymount University point out, paying attention to race isn’t necessarily illegal. “What [Mitchell] said was, essentially, ‘I paid attention to race.’ But there’s nothing under existing law that’s wrong with that. The problem comes when you pay too much attention to race at the exclusion of all of the other redistricting factors,” Levitt told the Los Angeles Times.
Meanwhile, the defense maintains that the Supreme Court’s recent decision to let Texas keep its gerrymandered map bodes poorly for the Republican challenge in California. Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Governor Newsom, stated, “In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’s, were drawn for lawful reasons. That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.” The Supreme Court’s majority decision, delivered just days after Prop 50 passed, was accompanied by a concurrence from Justice Samuel Alito. Alito wrote, “It is indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.” He added that, legally, such partisan gerrymandering is permissible—at least for now.
Legal scholars say the Republican case faces steep odds. Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA, explained, “It’s hard to prove racial predominance in drawing a map—that race predominated over partisanship or other traditional districting principles.” Hasen further noted that the Supreme Court’s Texas ruling has raised the bar for anyone seeking a preliminary injunction, especially so close to an election. “Trying to get a preliminary injunction, there’s a higher burden now, because it would be changing things closer to the election, and the Supreme Court signaled in that Texas ruling that courts should be wary of making changes.”
For many observers, the heart of the matter lies less in the intent of mapmakers than in the will of California’s voters. “Regardless of what Paul Mitchell or legislative leaders thought, they were just making a proposal to the voters,” Hasen said. “So it’s really the voters’ intent that matters. And if you look at what was actually presented to the voters in the ballot pamphlet, there was virtually nothing about race there.”
Yet, the Department of Justice’s complaint echoes the GOP’s concerns, contending that the new map uses race as a proxy for politics, manipulating district lines “in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.” This argument sets the stage for a high-stakes legal and political showdown, with implications that could ripple far beyond California’s borders. The case is being closely watched not just for its impact on the 2026 midterms, but also because Governor Newsom is widely seen as a likely contender for the 2028 presidential race.
As the hearings continue, the three-judge panel in Los Angeles will have to weigh the evidence and decide whether to block the new map before the looming candidate filing deadline. With the Supreme Court’s recent rulings casting a long shadow, and the eyes of the nation watching, California’s battle over Prop 50 is shaping up to be a defining moment in the ongoing national struggle over who gets to draw the lines—and who gets to win.
