DOJ Sues California to Stop Redistricting Plans
“Our Constitution does not tolerate this racial gerrymander.”
The Department of Justice has sued California over Prop 50, which would allow the legislature to redraw the Congressional map.
The new map would flip five districts from Republican to Democrat.
“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 DOJ argued. “In the press, California’s legislators and governor sold a plan to promote the interests of Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. But amongst themselves and on the debate floor, the focus was not partisanship, but race.”
The lawsuit mirrors the one filed by California Republicans. They filed their lawsuit on November 5, a day after voters voted for Prop 50.
“Our Constitution does not tolerate this racial gerrymander,” according to the filing.
The DOJ reminded the court that the department approved of California’s map during President Barack Obama’s administration.
“No one, let alone California, contends that its pre-existing map unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race,” added the DOJ. “Because the Proposition 50 map does, the United States respectfully requests that this Court enjoin Defendants from using it in the 2026 election and future elections.”
Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Prop 50.
Californians were sold an illegal, racially gerrymandered map, but the U.S. Constitution prohibits its use in 2026 and beyond.
See you in… https://t.co/HeuKMnEayd
— Jesus A. Osete (@JesusOseteDOJ) November 13, 2025
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Comments
Tossing everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Why not? The Communists certainly would do it
Were the Democrats foolish enough to cite race explicitly on the floor of the California House/Senate? That would be the wedge. One wonders if the USSC will end up with this one and whether the new map will be enjoined before that (thus not available for 2026).
The CA map isn’t going to be overturned. This is a Hail Mary move.
And things may get worse from here. If TX has the kind of voter swing VA had last week, the GOP will lose more than 5 seats instead of gaining any. Gerrymandering is always a trade-off between preserving existing seats and grabbing new ones. Trying to grab new seats for team red in a blue wave year is probably going to result in the loss of more seats than you would otherwise lose. CA Dems have running room to gerrymander because they got the wind at their backs. The GOP has the wind in our face.
Virginia didn’t have a voter swing last week.
The swing happened in the previous election. Last week was a reversion to type. It was to status quo.
Yes, the democrats were foolish enough to cite race. See page 2 of the complaint:
“[T]he first thing” that map drawer Paul Mitchell “did in drawing the new map”—the “number one thing that [he] first started thinking about”—was to create a new “majority/minority Latino district.” And legislators focused—not on the purported vote dilution of Democrats elsewhere across the country—but on the supposed dilution of the voting power of racial groups states. They in other feared that a “Latino voice in Texas is worth one third of the representation as a white voice.” That Texas would “slid[e] back” to the days of “Black Codes and Jim Crow.” And that Texas legislators would “silence the voices of Latino voters.” Proposition 50 would serve as a “shield” against “racist maps,” they told each other, so that minorities in California could “stand up and be counted.” The end result is a map that manipulates district lines in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.
I like the fighting spirit, although there is the proverbial army of #Resistance judges who will invoke the “….except for Trump and the Republican Party” clause written in invisible ink on every single law and Constitutional amendment.
“Our Constitution does not tolerate this racial gerrymander.”
Gee, now. That.s interesting. This has been more or less required under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with decisions made by tyrants in black dresses. All enfarced under the Justice Department’s civil rights watch dogs.
Why the change of heart?
Yeah the 14A requirement of equal protection for each individual Citizen and the 15A ban on voting rights being denied OR abridged on account of race were basically ignored with a ‘blind eye’ since the VRA began to be used not in a neutral manner to keep the field level on an individual voter basis but as a means of putting a thumb on the scale in favor of some but not other group rights.
Hopefully Roberts will incorporate his own advice into the ruling this term on the case from Louisiana and we can actually implement it …’the best way to stop discriminating by race is to STOP discriminating by race’. Any holding that allows race to be used to advantage members of one racial group automatically disadvantages members of other racial groups and that’s
supposed to be impermissible in voting. Doesn’t matter which ox is getting gored, the whole problem is that nobody’s ox is supposed to be gored on a racial basis in voting.
Racially gerrymandered districts are only mandatory when there’s basically a conspiracy by the majority to refuse to vote for any candidate who favors the minority’s interests. This probably did exist in some places in the 1960s, but it doesn’t exist today, and it certainly doesn’t exist in California, at least not against Hispanics. So the gerrymander is not mandatory, and if it’s not mandatory it’s forbidden. All of this is in the brief.
Is it supposed to be our problem that the Democrats are a bunch of racists?
While Hispanic is considered an ethnicity and often a culture, it is not a race.
Perhaps it’s a change of the people in the Civil Rights division and they’re actually interested in civil rights
What, put themselves out of a job?
Given the current edifice of group right preferences for some while creating disadvantages for others was built over the past six decades ish ….they’ve got plenty of things to undue/unwind for quite a while.
Hmmmm…”enfarced”. Is that spelling intentional, a Freudian slip, or a legit misspelling?
I believe that the USSC will be deciding the race consideration issue this session.