California Republicans have asked the state’s Supreme Court to block a mid-decade congressional redistricting measure from appearing on the Nov. 4 ballot, arguing that the planned special election violates the state Constitution and would compromise voter representation.
The latest petition comes just days after an unsuccessful attempt last week to have the California Supreme Court intervene and halt Democrats’ attempt to enact new, partisan congressional maps in California for the next three elections.
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Filed on Monday, Aug. 25, a group of Republican legislators alleged that California legislative leaders violated the state Constitution by bypassing a constitutional requirement for a 30-day public review period before voting on newly introduced legislation last week.
Mike Columbo, an attorney for the Republicans, said the effort denies voters their right to independent redistricting — something voters approved previously — and mid-decade redistricting further violates the law because the state Constitution only allows for redistricting once per decade.
The state legislature last week passed a package of bills to allow a measure to be placed on a special election ballot in November, asking voters to approve the partisan congressional maps. Democrats say they are intended to counter similar gerrymandering efforts that Texas and other red states are considering — at the urging of President Donald Trump — to ensure that Republicans retain control of the House. It was swiftly signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Republicans are asking the California Supreme Court to remove the ballot measure from the Nov. 4 special election.
The measure asks voters, who have final say, if they want to allow gerrymandered congressional maps to be used for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections before reverting to maps drawn by a nonpartisan independent commission.
Columbo said that by engaging in the redistricting process before voters actually granted lawmakers authority to do so, “the legislature exceeded its power under the Constitution.” Columbo said the legislature violated transparency and nonpartisan requirements for redistricting.
“These are current violations that must be stopped,” he said. “The legislature cannot break the law and ask for the people later to retroactively give it the power to redistrict.”
The petition asked the court to intervene by Sept. 8, before counties begin to print ballots for the special election.
Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire dismissed Republicans’ latest legal challenge.
“Another day, another Republican lawsuit. It’s really too bad they didn’t try this hard to stop their boss, Donald Trump, and Texas from starting all of this. If they had, we wouldn’t be here today. This litigation will get thrown out like all of the rest,” McGuire said in a statement.
Republicans filed a similar petition last week that was rejected by the California Supreme Court. The court’s order said the petitioners “failed to meet their burden of establishing a basis for relief at this time” under the state’s constitution.
Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, one of the petitioners involved in the lawsuit, said Republicans are again trying a legal avenue to stop redistricting because they believe the court rejected last week’s petition since, at that point, the legislature hadn’t yet passed the package of bills that sets up the special election. Newsom also hadn’t signed the bills then, Strickland noted, and a special election hadn’t officially been called.
But now that a special election has been called for November, another legal challenge would not be viewed by the court as simply preemptive, Strickland said.
The new petition also alleged the ballot measure before voters will illegally lump two issues into one measure, Strickland and Columbo said, forcing voters to vote either “yes” or “no” on both questions simultaneously. Republicans believe this violates a rule known as the “single subject rule.”
The first part of the measure, they said, asks voters if they think California should petition Congress to pass independent redistricting nationwide while the second part asks voters to adopt the recently proposed partisan congressional maps for California.
A voter may agree with the first question but not the second, yet the measure would force voters to only vote “yes” or “no” to both questions at the same time, they said.
“This (second) question is inconsistent with the first … and forces a person in favor of independent commission into a conundrum,” Columbo said.
Other Southern California GOP legislators whose names are listed on the petition include state Sen. Suzette Valladares of Santa Clarita, as well as Assemblymembers Kate Sanchez of Rancho Santa Margarita and Tri Ta of Westminster.
Strickland, during a press conference in Sacramento on Monday, accused Newsom, who’s been leading what Democrats have dubbed the “Election Rigging Response Act” campaign, of doing exactly what the governor said he’s standing up against.
“If anybody’s rigging an election, it’s Gavin Newsom,” Strickland said. “What he wants is to make sure that we have no competitive elections in California.”
Newsom’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment about the latest lawsuit.
Democrats have said California is only going down the path of mid-decade redistricting to “neutralize” similar attempts in red states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections to help Trump retain GOP control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
But Corrin Rankin, chair of the California Republican Party, said calling for independent redistricting is a nonpartisan issue.
“What’s happening in the (state) Capitol right now is wrong. … We want to preserve the Constitution and preserve our right to choose who represents us. If we don’t have that right anymore, then we have no control over our futures,” she said.
The GOP lawsuit is represented by the Dhillon Law Group. That law firm was founded by Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the Trump administration.
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