With the February 9 deadline to make a final decision approaching, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for California to use the gerrymandered congressional map Governor Gavin Newsom and his Democrat cohorts were able to get the state’s voters to approve in November which was drafted to result in five of the 12 California Congressional seats now held by Republicans being filled by Democrats following the November 2026 election.
The only change in the state’s electoral map that is likely to impact San Bernardino County consists of the possibility that Republican Congressman Ken Calvert, whose current 41st District in Riverside County was eliminated in a bid by the Democrats to end his political viability entirely, will now challenge 40th District Congresswoman Young Kim, who represents the southwesternmost portion of San Bernardino County.
At present, forty of California’s 52 Congressional seats are held by Democrats. From the outset of the gerrymander effort which began last summer, the Democrats’ intent was to thin the ranks of California’s Republican Congressional delegation even further.
That move required voter approval, which Newsom and the Democratic state legislature obtained by placing an initiative on the ballot in a specially-called election, at a cost of $282.6 million, in November.
A coalition of Republicans challenged the unusual maneuver and the elections outcome, but in a terse, one-sentence order, the justices turned down that request to have the state utilized the electoral map that was drawn in 2021 by a nonpartisan commission using data from the 2020 U.S. Census and which which was used in the last two federal election in California.
The court’s order came two months to the day after the justices, over a dissent by the court’s three Democratic appointees, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use a new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state.
It was that action by the Texas legislature last July which triggered the events leading to the California map change.
Texas’s gerrymander favoring Republicans did not go unchallenged by Democrats in that state.
After that map change was made, a suit was filed alleging the redrafting of the congressional districts would hamper fair representation of Latinos in certain areas of Texas. A court injunction blocked the map but in Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican who had invited the Texas legislature to make the map change to prevent the Democrats from obtaining a majority in the House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-term election and hamstringing President Donald Trump and his administration in the last two years of his current term as president, sued to force the Texas redistricting to go forward.
In Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, the lower court agreed with those challenging the new map that the “legislature’s motive was predominantly racial.”
The court majority on December 4 issued an order putting that ruling on hold. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, stated “it is indisputable … that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map was partisan advantage pure and simple.” This discounted any racial or racist element to the motivation for the redistricting. This presaged the reasoning that would be used in the ruling relating to the California redistricting.
Of note is that in Texas, the argument made against the new map was the intent behind it was to limit Hispanic voting power and in California the argument against the new map there would be that it was aimed at increasing Latino voting power.
California’s map redrafting was more involved, difficult and expensive than the redrawing of the Texas electoral map. Texas law allowed the legislature to on its own initiative or request from the governor to undertake reapportionment. In California, a initiative put in place by a vote of the people required that maps be drawn by a nonpartisan commission and that they can only be altered by a vote of the electorate. Thus, in August, the California legislature, at Governor Newsom’s instigation, consented to the creation of a map drawn up by a political cartographer working at the behest of the Democratic Party. The legislature did not approve the map but voted to place an initiative – which became Proposition 50 – before the state’s voters in November. Proposition 50 called for amending the California Constitution to allow the use of the new map from 2026 through 2030.
California’s voters on November 4. 2025 passed Proposition 50 with 5,291,908 votes or roughly 63.9 percent in favor and 2,989,022 votes or roughly 36.1 percent opposed.
On November 7, a coalition of Republicans went to court in an effort to block the use of the map. They argued that the map violated the U.S. Constitution by relying on race in drawing 16 congressional districts that impermissibly favored Latino voters.
A divided three-judge district court – which Congress assigned to hear congressional redistricting cases – rejected the request, leaving the new map in place. Writing for the majority, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton concluded “that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming.”
Staton further dismissed the plaintiffs’ contention that even if the voters had partisan motives when they approved Proposition 50, “they were simply dupes of a racially-motivated legislature.”
The challengers took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court on January 20, seeking intervention. They maintained the state’s goal was “offsetting a perceived racial gerrymander in Texas.” Additionally, they argued, the lower court should have given more weight to the testimony by the private consultant, Paul Mitchell, who drew the new map – and who “boasted publicly and on social media,” they said, that the new map “would maintain, if not expand, Latino voting power in California.” They asked the court to act by February 9, the day that the filing period for elective office in California starts.
The State of California.in its response asserted that the lower court considered statements by Mitchell and state legislators, but had concluded the new map was not racially influenced. More broadly, it contended, the challengers were “asking the Court to treat California’s map differently from how it treated Texas’s map, thereby allowing a Republican-led State to engage in partisan gerrymandering while forbidding a Democratic-led State from responding in kind.”
On Wednesday, February 4, with five days remaining before the February 9 deadline requested by the challengers, the court turned down the challengers’ request to intervene.
The Proposition 50 Congressional district map redraft dilutes the number of GOP voters in California Congressional District 1, where Congressman Doug La Malfa was the representative in before his January death; Congressional District 3 where Kevin Kiley is the incumbent; California Congressional District 22, where David Valadao serves; and California Congressional District 48, where Darrell Issa is the incumbent. The map further extinguishes the 41st Congressional District from Riverside County, where Ken Calvert is serving, reestablishing the 41st District elsewhere.
What the Democrats might have accomplished with the gerrymander is to ignite hostility between Republicans where previously it did not exist. It appears that Calvert, who has been in Congress since 1993, is contemplating challenging Young Kim, another Republican, in the 40th Congressional District primary in June.