Tonight in Your Rights: California's maps upheld
The Supreme Court balances the ledger, leaving Gov. Newsom's Democratic-friendly maps in place before the midterms.
“Tonight in Your Rights” is a legal roundup for particularly active days in U.S. courts.
The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for California to keep using Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Democratic-friendly maps during the 2026 midterm elections.
“Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas,” Newsom of California told The New York Times in a statement. “He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he’ll lose again in November.”
The Supreme Court recently upheld Texas maps on the grounds that they were designed for partisan gain rather than racial gerrymandering, overruling a lower court in the Lone Star State that found the opposite. The court’s conservative supermajority is widely expected to void Louisiana’s maps in a decision that may further erode the vestiges of the Voting Rights Act.
On Wednesday, the court appeared to balance the ledger with no noted dissents.
The Supreme Court rejected a request for an injunction that would have blocked California’s maps in a single-sentence order.
University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman, the author of “Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes,” quipped that the development was a harbinger of how the high court could always get worse.
“It underscores that the next generation of Trump nominees is going to be even nuttier than Alito,” Litman told All Rise News.
Donald Trump could eventually, for example, try to give his Ninth Circuit appointee Kenneth Lee a Supreme Court nomination.
“Not even Sam Alito would invalidate the map,” Litman noted. “Judge Lee did.”
Lee was the sole dissenter in the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding California’s congressional maps.
The Supreme Court hasn’t yet decided whether to hear the California Republican Party’s case.
Below the Paywall:
- Fulton County fights the Trump FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots.
- Feds (barely) withdraw agents from the Twin Cities.
- Bloodletting continues inside the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office.
- Elon Musk can’t duck DOGE-related deposition.
- The Portland Chicken strikes a blow for democracy.
