In December, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority reinstated Texas’ Republican gerrymander after a lower federal court struck it down. The plaintiffs in that case presented considerable evidence that Texas’ gerrymander was enacted, at least in part, to racially gerrymander some parts of the state. But the court’s Republican majority deemed this evidence insufficient.
Now, the Supreme Court is about to decide a similar case, Tangipa v. Newsom, which challenges California’s attempt to offset Texas’ Republican gerrymander by enacting a Democratic gerrymander that cancels out the GOP’s gains in Texas. While there is much less evidence that the California gerrymander was racially motivated than there was in the Texas case, the California GOP has produced some evidence that at least points in that direction. If the Supreme Court had struck down the Texas gerrymander, it’s possible to imagine a fair judge also concluding that California’s new maps must go.
But no competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude both that the Texas gerrymander is lawful and that the California maps are an illegal racial gerrymander. Tangipa, in other words, is a test of the Republican justices’ honesty. If they actually believe what they said in the Texas case, which is known as Abbott v. LULAC, they will deny the Republican Party’s attempt to undo California’s gerrymander.
Alternatively, if they rule in favor of this challenge, it will remove any doubt that this court is trying to rig the game to benefit the Republican Party.
In LULAC, the evidence that Texas drew its gerrymandered congressional maps for impermissible racial reasons arose out of an incompetently drafted letter signed by U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, and from Texas officials’ response to that letter.
The Trump Justice Department’s letter claimed, incorrectly, that it is illegal for a state to draw any congressional district where white people are in the minority, and two other racial groups combined make up the majority. It effectively ordered Texas to change the racial makeup of its congressional map to eliminate districts that fit this description. Several top Texas officials cited this letter to justify Texas’ new maps.
But the Republican justices deemed this evidence insufficient to strike down Texas’ map, saying it is “ambiguous” and ruling that ambiguous evidence is not enough.
Meanwhile, in Tangipa, Republicans cite several statements by state lawmakers and other people involved in the mapmaking process, which they claim are evidence that California’s new maps were drawn in order to increase the voting power of Latinos.
Most of the statements the GOP points to in its brief say nothing of the kind. That said, Republicans do place an enormous amount of weight on a statement by Paul Mitchell, a private consultant hired by Democrats to draw the California maps.
After the maps were drawn, but before they were approved by the state’s voters, Mitchell told a Latino interest group that the new maps “will further increase Latino voting power,” that they add an additional “Latino influence district” and that they “ensure that the Latino districts are bolstered in order to make them most effective.”
It is safe to say that this statement, if it were combined with other evidence of impermissible racial motives, could help bolster a case against California’s new maps. But Mitchell’s comments could just as easily be construed as a neutral description of how the maps would impact Latino voters.
In fairness to the court’s Republicans, they did suggest in their LULAC opinion that the Texas and California gerrymanders are mirror images of each other. The majority opinion in that case begins with the observation that after Texas drew its new map, “California responded with its own map for the stated purpose of counteracting what Texas had done.”
All that the Republican justices need to do in order to uphold California’s map is to reach the same conclusions that they reached in the LULAC opinion. If they instead decide to strike down California’s map, the only possible explanation will be that majority wants to rig the 2026 midterms for their own political party.
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States.