After voters overwhelmingly approved Gavin Newsom’s redistricting ballot measure last month, Republicans are looking for a do-over in court to halt the new maps, as the GOP fears a blowout in the 2026 midterm elections.

In what was probably California Governor Gavin Newsom’s greatest political victory of the Trump 2.0 term, his Prop 50 measure to reconfigure California’s congressional districts cruised to a dominant 65%-35% victory last month. That measure would effectively hand Democrats five more California seats in the US House of Representatives, a direct response to the Texas redistricting effort that gerrymandered five extra seats for Republicans in the House. Fair’s fair, right?

California Republicans don't think so. The state’s GOP announced they were filing a lawsuit to stop the California redistricting on the very day after Prop 50 passed. And the Associated Press reports that hearings started today at a federal court in Los Angeles, where a three-judge panel will ultimately rule on whether they will grant a restraining order to stop the redistricting before the December 19 filing deadline for candidates to run in the 2026 elections.

Republicans claim the new voter-approved redistricting maps were drawn up to favor the influence of Hispanic voters. Trump’s Justice Department has since joined in on the lawsuit.

“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 Republican lawsuit says, per the AP.

Team Newsom insists that since the Supreme Court upheld Texas’s new redistricting map, the same ought to hold for California too.

“In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’s, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Newsom spokesperson Brandon Richards said in a statement to the AP. "That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

The claim that race was a factor in drawing California’s maps seems a stretch. It looks extremely obvious to any commonsense observer that both California and Texas redrew their maps purely as power grabs for either the Democratic or Republican parties. And while that feels unseemly, it is perfectly legal.

Ultraconservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said as much in his December 4 concurrence with the Supreme Court decision upholding Texas’s new map (a decision that came down a full month after California voters passed their new gerrymandered map).

“It is indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Alito wrote. And he wrote that in a decision supporting partisan gerrymandering.

Related: Republicans Sue to Try to Stop Prop 50 From Taking Effect [SFist]

Image: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 1: California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a "Yes On Prop 50" volunteer event at the LA Convention Center on November 1, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. California's Prop 50 is on the ballot to either authorize or deny temporary changes to congressional district maps. Election Day is November 4th. (Photo by Jill Connelly/Getty Images)