The Trump administration is attempting to block California’s new congressional map that was approved by voters last week, which would create five additional House districts favoring Democrats.
The Justice Department sought to intervene in a lawsuit on Thursday originally filed by the California Republican Party, which looks to prohibit the state from implementing new maps. Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats campaigned for the new map in response to President Donald Trump’s push to draw new maps in Texas and other states to create more Republican-leaning districts.
Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Newsom of executing a “brazen power grab” and argued the maps violate civil rights laws.
“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Bondi said in a statement. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”
Federal courts are prohibited from policing partisan gerrymandering following a sweeping 2019 Supreme Court ruling.
Instead, Justice officials argue the map violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and the Voting Rights Act by factoring in racial demographics when drawing new districts. The lawsuit cites public comments from Paul Mitchell, the redistricting expert who helped draw new maps, to argue that California Democrats factored in the distribution of Latino voters in each district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority political representation.
“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Proposition 50,” DOJ lawyers wrote.
The question of whether the Voting Rights Act clashes with the Constitution sits at the heart of the conservative legal argument that was presented to the Supreme Court as part of the Louisiana vs. Callais case argued last month. Some of the conservative justices in the Court’s majority suggested the use of race-conscious parameters for drawing district lines is unconstitutional.
Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards expressed confidence the new maps would survive DOJ’s court challenge.
“These losers lost at the ballot box and soon they will also lose in court,” Richards said.
The Department of Justice’s entrance into the matter sharply escalates the challenge, first filed by the California GOP the day after the election, and represents the latest front in a nationwide redistricting war.
Trump successfully pushed Texas to redraw its maps to create five GOP-leaning districts, and Republicans in Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina followed suit with new maps of their own. The Trump administration spurred the Texas redistricting into motion by suggesting Texas’ maps were unconstitutional, an assertion that many election law experts at the time dismissed as flimsy.
In response to Trump’s push in Texas, Newsom and Democrats in California overrode their state’s independent redistricting commission and proposed a ballot measure for new congressional maps that would create five new Democratic-leaning districts. Voters approved the new maps by an overwhelming margin last week.
Democrats in Virginia are moving to join California in drawing new maps ahead of the midterms, while Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has launched a commission to push for redistricting in his state.
In her announcement, Bondi said Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general and head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, has recused herself from the case. Dhillon was previously the vice chair of the California Republican Party.
