A trio of federal judges questioned attorneys for Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Republican Party on Wednesday in a pivotal legal case that will decide the fate of California’s new voter-approved congressional districts for the 2026 midterms elections.
Attorneys for the California Republican Party and the Trump administration’s Department of Justice during the hearing recapped the argument they made in their legal complaint, accusing Democratic legislators and redistricting experts of racial gerrymandering that illegally favored Latinos.
The state’s legal representatives, meanwhile, argued their primary goal was not racial but political — they worked to weaken Republicans’ voting power in California to offset similar gerrymandering in Texas and other GOP-led states.
But Wednesday was the first time the public got to hear the three federal judges of the Central District of California challenge those narratives as they weigh whether to grant the GOP’s request for a temporary injunction blocking the reconfigured congressional districts approved by voters in November under Proposition 50.
The GOP has repeatedly seized on public comments from Paul Mitchell, a redistricting expert for California’s Democratic-led Legislature who designed the Proposition 50 congressional districts, that “the No. 1 thing” he started thinking about was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles.”
On Wednesday, District Court Judge Josephine Staton suggested that GOP attorneys focused too much on the intent of Mitchell and Democratic legislators and not enough on the voters who ultimately approved Proposition 50.
“Why would we not be looking at their intent?” Staton asked Michael Columbo, an attorney for California Republicans. “If the relative intent is the voters, you have nothing.”
Nearly two-thirds of California voters approved the new Proposition 50 congressional district map in a Nov. 4 special election after Newsom pitched the idea as a way to counter partisan gerrymandering after President Trump pressed Texas to redraw maps to shore up the GOP’s narrow House majority.
The stakes for California and the nation are high.
If the new map is used for the 2026 midterms, it could give California Democrats up to five additional U.S. House seats. That could allow them to push back against the gains Republicans make due to redistricting in staunchly GOP states and increase Democrats’ chance of seizing the House and shifting the balance of power in Congress.
A win for Democrats could also boost Newsom’s national clout and help him pitch himself as the nation’s strongest and most effective Trump critic as he enters his final year as California governor and weighs a White House bid.
During closing arguments Wednesday, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice argued that the race-based aspect of the redrawn districts started with the drafting of the Assembly bill that led to Proposition 50 being placed on the ballot.
Staton, however, seemed unconvinced.
“These maps have no effect,” she said, “until the voters give them effect.”
The GOP cannot challenge the map on grounds of political gerrymandering: The Supreme Court decided in 2019 that such complaints have no path in federal court. That leaves them focusing on race.
But proving that race predominated over partisanship is a challenge, legal scholars say, and paying attention to race is not, in itself, prohibited under current law. To prove that race was the key motivation, plaintiffs have to show there is another way for map makers to achieve their desired political result without a racial impact.
During the hearing, Staton stressed that the burden was on the challengers of Proposition 50 to prove racial intent.
To that end, the GOP brought to the stand RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende, who said the new 13th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley had an “appendage” that snaked northward into Stockton. Such contorted offshoots, he said, are “usually indicative of racial gerrymandering.” Trende produced an alternative map of the district that he said retained Democratic representation without being driven by race.
But Staton questioned whether Trende’s map was substantially different from Mitchell’s, noting they both seemed to fall within a similar range of Latino representation.
U.S. District Judge Wesley Hsu lambasted Columbo over what he called the “strawman” attempt to pick out one district, the 13th Congressional District, to make the case that there was a race-conscious effort in the attempt to flip five seats in the Democrats’ favor.
Jennifer Rosenberg, an attorney for the state, also argued that Trende’s analysis was too narrow.
“Dr. Trende failed to conduct a district by district analysis,” Rosenberg said. “And as we can see, he only addressed two tiny portions of District 13 and really only focused on one of the subparts.”
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Lee questioned Rosenberg on how much she believed Mitchell’s public statements about wanting to create a Latino district in Los Angeles influenced his redrawing.
“He was talking to interested groups,” Rosenberg said. “He did not communicate that intent to legislators.”
However, Lee said that Mitchell’s closeness to Democratic interest groups was an important factor. Mitchell “delivered on” the “wants” of the Latino interest groups he interacted with, Lee said, based on his public statements and lack of testimony.
Lee also took issue with Mitchell not testifying at the hearing and the dozens of times he invoked legislative privilege during a deposition ahead of the hearing.
Abha Khanna, who represented the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, argued there was no racial predominance in Mitchell’s statements.
She showed judges the text of Proposition 50, an official voter guide and statements from Newsom, arguing they were overt declarations of partisan intent. She also pointed out instances in which Republican plaintiffs discussed Proposition 50 in exclusively partisan terms.
If the federal judges grant a preliminary injunction, California would be temporarily blocked from using the newly drawn map in the 2026 election. Attorneys for the state would probably appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just two weeks ago, the nation’s highest court allowed Texas to temporarily keep its newly drawn congressional districts — which also faced complaints of racial gerrymandering — after a federal court blocked the Texas map, finding racial considerations probably made it unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court indicated it viewed the Texas redistricting as motivated primarily by partisan politics. In its ruling, it explicitly drew a connection between Texas and California, noting that several states, including California, have redrawn their congressional map “in ways that are predicted to favor the State’s dominant political party.”
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