GOP bid to block blue state redistricting torn apart as judges dismantle party's arguments

Republicans' lawsuit trying to overturn California's mid-decade redistricting map ran into a brick wall this week, as a three-judge panel grilled them intensively, with a clear indication they weren't moved by the arguments.

Voters approved Proposition 50 in November, a redraw of the congressional lines that seeks to give Democrats five currently Republican-held seats. Gov. Gavin Newsom championed the measure in response to a similar redraw by Republican lawmakers in Texas seeking to make five Democratic seats more friendly to the GOP.

The California Republican Party's lawsuit argues that the map instead unlawfully uses racial criteria to draw lines, creating extra seats for Hispanic voters. But according to Courthouse News Service, a majority of the three-judge panel didn't appear to buy this.

"U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee, and U.S. District Wesley Hsu, a Joe Biden appointee, repeatedly expressed their incredulity with the argument that the new map that the state’s voters approved last month was anything other than the widely acknowledged partisan gerrymander in reaction to Texas overhauling its congressional map to add five more Republicans seats in the House," said the report. "The two judges challenged him to explain how that made race the predominant factor when, leading up to the vote on Proposition 50, the plaintiffs had characterized it as a political power grab by the Democrats."

Staton noted that voters had approved the redraw, and there was no evidence they were tricked into voting for something with motives other than the stated ones. “They had the final say, the voters, and you haven’t said anything about the voters’ intent,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hsu noted that “It was all about partisan gerrymandering in response to what Texas did. The stated goal was to react to what Texas did by creating five more Democratic seats," and demanded that David Goldman, the Justice Department lawyer presenting the Trump administration's case in support of the plaintiffs, did not also intervene in Texas.

Only one judge, Trump-appointed Kenneth Lee, appeared to have sympathy for the defendants, accusing the California legislature of an "outrageous" lack of transparency.

Democrats in Texas filed a similar racial gerrymandering lawsuit to try to overturn the map there, citing the legislature's repeated claims the Trump administration told them they had an illegal number of nonwhite seats. A three-judge panel there blocked the map in a scathing opinion written by a Trump-appointed judge, but the Supreme Court reversed this ruling — and in their opinion, hinted any such attempt to overturn the map in California would be doomed as well.