A coalition of Texas voters, supported by the National Redistricting Foundation, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging House Bill 4 (HB 4), the mid-decade congressional redistricting plan approved by the Texas Legislature on August 23, 2025. The complaint alleges that HB 4 intentionally dismantles majority-minority districts in regions including Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Central Texas, and South Texas, thereby expanding Anglo control over Texas’s 38 U.S. House seats.
The lawsuit names Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson and Governor Greg Abbott as defendants, seeking to block the implementation of HB 4 in future elections. It requests the court to declare the map unconstitutional under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and unlawful under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs also seek the appointment of a remedial process and an injunction against the state from administering elections under the new lines.
Central to the dispute is the Legislature’s decision to undertake redistricting just four years after the post-census plan was drawn. Governor Abbott added redistricting to a July special session following a U.S. Department of Justice letter raising constitutional concerns about four districts—TX-9, TX-18, TX-29, and TX-33—characterized as racially gerrymandered coalition seats. Although the state had previously defended the 2021 plan as race-neutral, Abbott indicated a desire for maps that do not impose coalition districts, referencing the Fifth Circuit’s 2024 Petteway decision. This case held that the Voting Rights Act does not require states to create districts where multiple minority groups combine to form a majority but did not declare such districts unlawful. The plaintiffs argue that Texas exploited this nuance to justify eliminating districts where Black and Latino voters had been electing their candidates of choice.
The complaint portrays HB 4 as a racially engineered overhaul under the guise of legal housekeeping. In Harris County, it alleges that lawmakers collapsed two longstanding coalition districts by packing Black voters into a newly drawn TX-18, set just above a Black-majority threshold, while reworking TX-9 into a nominal Latino-majority seat that, based on past election data, would still elect Anglo-preferred candidates. Similar allegations are made regarding districts in Dallas County, Central Texas, and along the Gulf Coast, where the plaintiffs contend that the Legislature’s actions have diluted minority voting power.
Beyond specific districts, the filing claims that the map rewrites the overall balance of representation. Under the 2021 plan, 22 districts had an Anglo-majority citizen voting-age population; HB 4 increases that number to 24, even as Anglo Texans now make up roughly half of the statewide eligible electorate. The plaintiffs also point to a series of districts drawn to 50–51 percent Black or Latino citizen voting-age population as evidence that race predominated over traditional criteria such as compactness, county integrity, and community ties.
The complaint proceeds on five fronts: intentional discrimination under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act; racial gerrymandering claims; a Section 2 “results” violation; malapportionment; and the argument that mid-decade redistricting using racial data and pursuing partisan advantage violates Equal Protection. Given that the case challenges congressional apportionment, it will be heard by a three-judge district court, with any appeal proceeding directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The plaintiffs are asking the court to enjoin HB 4, order a remedial plan that restores or creates functioning minority opportunity districts, and, if needed, oversee the process to ensure compliance with federal law. The state is expected to defend the new lines as a lawful response to evolving precedent and to argue that partisan considerations, not race, explain the design—a position the plaintiffs contend is contradicted by the map’s shapes, the precision of its racial thresholds, and the state’s own record.
([texastribune.org](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/23/texas-congressional-map-lawsuit/?utm_source=openai))