The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously rejected a bid to overturn California’s new redistricting plan, delivering a win for Democrats who hope to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives in this year’s midterm elections.
In an unsigned order, the court rejected an appeal of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding Proposition 50, the voter-approved ballot measure backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that redrew the state’s congressional district lines.
In arguments to the high court, the Trump administration called the California plan “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” The administration pointed to a Central Valley district held by U.S. Rep. Adam Gray, a Democrat, that it said was drawn to be a majority-Hispanic district.
Attorneys for California pointed out that Gray’s district actually lost a share of Latino voting-age population.
“There is no basis in the record to hold that race was the predominant motivation for any lines drawn in District 13,” the attorneys wrote.
Newsom threw his political capital behind Proposition 50 in the wake of an unprecedented battle over mid-decade redistricting, which erupted first in Texas over the summer. Texas Republicans muscled through a new map that shifted five Democratic incumbents into Republican-friendly territory; California’s plan puts at risk the same number of Republican incumbents.
A three-judge panel of Ninth Circuit jurists upheld Proposition 50 in a split decision in January. A judge appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term in office dissented.
The decision comes about two months after the same Supreme Court justices upheld the new Texas maps, though in a decision in which the three liberal justices dissented. In its arguments to the high court, California’s lawyers cited a concurring opinion — authored by Justice Samuel Alito — to shore up their point.
“Plaintiffs are asking the Court to treat California’s map differently from how it treated Texas’s map, thereby allowing a Republican-led State to engage in partisan gerrymandering while forbidding a Democratic-led state from responding in kind,” California’s lawyers wrote. Allowing the Republican suit to continue “would embroil this Court in precisely the kind of partisan controversy it has long sought to avoid.”
Responding to the high court’s decision, Newsom wrote on X: “LFG.”