TEXAS – On Monday, the special session called by Governor Greg Abbott began in the Texas Capitol. The special session was called to address several topics, including standardized testing, property taxes and THC.
But now, at the request of President Donald Trump, on Wednesday, Gov. Abbott called for three special hearings to address congressional redistricting in Texas.
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The first hearing will take place in the Texas Capitol on Thursday, July 24. The second hearing will be in Houston on the main campus of the University of Houston. It will take place Saturday, July 26, at 11 a.m. The final hearing will take place the following Monday, July 28, at the University of Texas at Arlington. The time is scheduled for 5 p.m.
The plan is for Texas to redraw its congressional districts and gain five additional Republican seats. Currently, Texas has 38 seats in the House. Republicans now hold 25 and Democrats 12, with one seat vacant after Democrat Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, died in March.
Although Republicans currently hold two-thirds of Texas’s congressional seats, they received only about 58% of the vote in last year’s election.
Back in 2018, during the midterms of Donald Trump’s first term, a year marked by a Democratic wave, Texas Republicans won just over 50% of the statewide vote and lost two seats. However, in 2022, following a controversial redistricting plan that voting rights groups sued over, Republicans regained those two seats.
Texas is unique in explicitly allowing more than one redistricting between the 10-year census cycles.
Even so, this approach takes advantage of the fact that the pre-clearance requirement for new electoral maps under the Voting Rights Act was removed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, making it easier to implement maps without federal approval.
So, what is the redistricting process?
The rules for drawing new legislative district maps in Texas follow the Texas Constitution. But every 10 years, the process can look different depending on what the state lawmakers, governor, Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB), and courts do. Past decades show this has varied a lot. Still, the main steps usually follow a basic order.
Normally, there are certain deadlines for each step set by state and federal laws. But because of COVID-19, the 2020 census data was delayed. That caused delays in redrawing districts in 2021. The LRB could not act in 2021, so the legislature had to handle redistricting in a special session.
In 2021:
- Census data needed for U.S. House districts came out on April 26 instead of January 1.
- More detailed data arrived on August 12, after the regular legislative session ended.
- A special legislative session started on September 20 to work on redistricting state and federal districts and school board maps.
Federal law requires the census data to be given to the states by April 1 after the census year, usually earlier. Once data is ready, lawmakers start drawing new district maps. Redistricting bills go through the legislature like any other law.
If lawmakers don’t pass new state Senate or House district maps in the first legislative session after the census, the Texas Constitution says the LRB, a group of five officials, will create their own maps. The LRB’s power to do this only lasts for a few months after that session.
If new U.S. House or school board district maps don’t pass, the governor can call a special session to fix it. If there’s no special session or the session doesn’t pass maps, a court will likely step in and set the maps before the next election. The same applies if lawmakers and the LRB fail to agree on state legislative maps after their time is up.
Anyone can challenge new redistricting maps in court under state or federal laws. Before 2013, Texas had to get federal approval (called preclearance) before using new maps. But the U.S. Supreme Court ended that requirement in 2013.
Texas law sets a deadline for primary election candidates to file about six and a half months after the regular legislative session ends. This deadline gives the governor time to act on redistricting bills, allows the LRB or special sessions to meet if needed, lets courts step in if necessary, and gives counties time to adjust election precincts.