California Republicans filed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday seeking to block the state’s new congressional map.
The map, drawn by Democrats and passed by voters in November through a ballot measure known as Proposition 50, could allow Democrats to pick up as many as five House seats in this year's midterm elections. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom championed it as a response to a new GOP-drawn map in Texas, which is expected to net Republicans up to five seats.
California Republicans sued over the map last year, arguing it was racially gerrymandered. The Justice Department joined the lawsuit, but a federal court rejected the appeal last week, concluding the map was an intentional partisan gerrymander.
Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to act by Feb. 9. The candidate filing deadline in California is March 6 and the primary is June 2.
“Our emergency application asks the Supreme Court to put the brakes on Prop. 50 now, before the Democrats try to run out the clock and force candidates and voters to live with unconstitutional congressional districts,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement.
California's new map represents Democrats' biggest response to Republicans' mid-cycle redistricting efforts ahead of the fight for the House majority this fall. At President Donald Trump's urging, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas enacted congressional boundaries last year.
Democrats in Texas had made a similar argument to Republicans in California last year that GOP lawmakers had unlawfully considered race when drawing the state's new map. A lower court briefly blocked the map before the Supreme Court ruled in December that Texas could implement it for the 2026 elections.
In a concurring opinion in the Texas decision, Justice Samuel Alito referred to California, writing that it was "indisputable" that "the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
