By Douglas V. Gibbs
Proposition 50 passed in California. The reason for the vote was that California’s state constitution disallows the politicians to draw up the maps that determine congressional districting in the state. California requires any redistricting to be accomplished by an independent panel that consists of citizens, rather than letting someone like Governor Gavin Newsom grab the wheel. However, after Texas changed its maps to eliminate ridiculously gerrymandered lines likely costing the Democrats a few seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the California Governor decided he needed to fight fire with fire. California’s map is already gerrymandered pretty badly, but Newsom figured he could squeeze a few more democrats out of the tortured map. But, to do so, he needed voter approval to temporarily set aside the state constitution’s demand that the politicians have no hand in redistricting.
“Well,” said a friend of mine. “That’s unconstitutional.”
According to Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ), that may very well be true. The DOJ sued California’s governor, and Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the newly adopted congressional map on November 13, 2025. The lawsuit alleges that the redistricting plan’s gerrymandering is racially designed. If that is so, then it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. According to the DOJ, that means “California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process.”
According to the election returns, the ballot measure was approved by nearly 65% of the voters. While one might consider that percentage about right considering how blue California has become since the days of it being Reagan Country, that number might seem a little high when one considers that in the 2024 Presidential Election Kamala Harris garnered 58.5% of the vote, which is about 6.5% less than the overwhelming majority that allegedly approved Prop 50.
Nonetheless, the DOJ alleges that they have “substantial evidence” the California legislature’s map was drawn in a manner where “racial considerations predominated, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause…Race cannot be used as a proxy to advance political interests, but that is precisely what the California General Assembly did with Prop 50.”
The map, if the vote in 2026 goes as Governor Newsom assumes, would reduce GOP seats in the U.S. House of Representatives for California from nine out of 52 to four. A previous lawsuit by Republicans to keep Prop 50 off the ballot in the first place was dismissed by the state Supreme Court.
In addition to Texas, Republican-led legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina have also approved new congressional maps in special sessions to combat gerrymandering, with Ohio set to do the same.
With all of that said, the lawsuit may have not been the best way to address this. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution allows Congress to pass law to “make or alter such regulations” should a state’s prescriptions regarding federal elections be outside basic constitutional principles. Then again, Democrats in the Senate might fight it with a filibuster and refusal to meet cloture, as they did with the government shutdown.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
