The Department of Justice sued on Thursday to block the congressional map approved by California voters earlier this month, accusing Golden State Democrats of trying to maximize their political advantage by creating districts along racial lines.
The new map, drawn in response to Republican-led redistricting efforts in Texas, violates both the Equal Protection Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, the DOJ argues.
“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 suit reads.
The suit alleges that a new congressional map was drawn to maximize the influence of Latino voters and other racial minority groups that reliably vote Democrat.
“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”
Voters overwhelmingly approved the new map in the recent election: Proposition 50 passed with nearly 65 percent of the vote. The DOJ is joining a suit originally filed by California Republicans the day after Election Day.
California’s Proposition 50 adds five reliably Democratic seats to the state’s congressional map, wiping out any advantage Republicans hoped to derive from the new Texas map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“‘[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,'” the suit alleges.
“Our Constitution does not tolerate this racial gerrymander.”
“Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Prop 50,” Jesus A. Osete, principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, said. “Californians were sold an illegal, racially gerrymandered map, but the U.S. Constitution prohibits its use in 2026 and beyond.”
President Donald Trump has been openly critical of the proposition.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED. All “Mail-In” Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are “Shut Out,” is under very serious legal and criminal review,” Trump said in a November Truth Social post.