A three-judge panel upheld California’s new redistricting maps approved through Proposition 50, ruling against arguments that the maps favored Hispanics.
In a 2-1 decision, the court found that “Challengers have failed to show that racial gerrymandering occurred, and we conclude that there is no basis for issuing a preliminary injunction. Our conclusion probably seems obvious to anyone who followed the news in the summer and fall of 2025.”
“Indeed, the record contains a mountain of statements reflecting the partisan goals of Proposition 50, from which Challengers have culled a molehill of statements showing race consciousness on the part of the mapmaker and certain legislators,” the filing added. “But that is not enough to make the necessary showing that the relevant decisionmakers— here, the electorate—enacted the new map for racial reasons. Nor have Challengers offered alternative maps that would prove otherwise. Significantly, they provide no alternative map for any congressional district except one: District 13. And as to that district, the alternative maps they do offer are either materially indistinguishable from the Proposition 50 Map or do not meet other redistricting goals.”
Judge Kenneth Lee dissented from the opinion issued by Judge Josephine Staton and Judge Wesley Hsu. Lee argued that the court “should have acted to prevent California from following an unlawful path that will inevitably sow racial divisions and upset the melting pot that makes California great.”
California Republicans filed a lawsuit in November in an effort to block Proposition 50. It alleged that state lawmakers violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments upon drawing “new congressional district lines based on race, specifically to favor Hispanic voters, without cause or evidence to justify it.”
