Officially Chartered by the National Federation of Republican Women and Permanently Chartered by the California Republican Party
From the Desk of Lydia Kanno, CFRW President
Submitted by CFRW Legislative Analyst Michaela Swaney
November 6, 2025
Prop 50: What Happens Next?
As Proposition 50 passed Tuesday night amid low voter turnout, we were prepared for this outcome — and the fight is far from over.
The next morning, the Dhillon Law Group filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new congressional maps on constitutional grounds, arguing that the maps were drawn using race based criteria favoring Latino voters, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
You can watch the full press conference with Mark Meuser, Mike Columbo, Corrin Rankin & Assemblymember Tangipa here: https://youtu.be/y3bhxV9QHQg
The lawsuit references the Supreme Court’s limited exception allowing race conscious districting only when it is necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 specifically Section 2, which prohibits practices that dilute minority voting power.
Under the landmark 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, the Court created a three part test “the Gingles test” to determine when a VRA remedy is justified:
- Compactness and Size — The minority group must be large and geographically compact enough to form a majority in a single member district.
- Political Cohesion — The minority group must vote cohesively for similar candidates.
- Bloc Voting by the Majority — The majority group must vote as a bloc in a way that usually defeats the minority’s preferred candidates.
Because California has no single racial majority and Latinos already form the largest share of voters and successfully elect their preferred candidates statewide, Dhillon Law Group argues that California cannot satisfy this test.
Moreover, the suit contends that California’s Legislature and redistricting commission did not rely on any formal analysis showing a Section 2 violation or racial vote dilution before approving the maps. Without such evidence, the state cannot invoke the limited constitutional exception allowing race based redistricting.
Therefore, the lawsuit argues that Proposition 50’s maps constitute unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under the Equal Protection Clause, rather than a legitimate compliance measure under the Voting Rights Act.
How This Differs from Prior Lawsuits?
Because the Dhillon team’s claim involves racial gerrymandering under the 14th & 15th Amendment, the panel will likely treat the issue as constitutionally serious, which often weighs in favor of temporary relief especially before candidate filing deadlines like December 19th 2025.
Timeline:
- Case filed: Nov 5th 2025
- 3-Judge panel designation: ~1 week
- Initial responses: 30 days
- Hearing: Early 2026
- Decision: Spring/summer 2026
Can California Quickly Overturn A Stay?
- If the federal panel issues the stay, the State of California through the Attorney General can appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court under 28 U.S.C. Section 1253.
- However, it’s not a normal appeal; the Supreme Court has discretionary control and often requires an emergency application sometimes called a “shadow docket” or emergency stay request.
That means:
- The injunction would remain in effect unless and until the Supreme Court specifically steps in.
- California cannot quickly overturn the panel’s decision on its own; it must go through SCOTUS.
Supreme Court Context: Louisiana v. Callais and Its Impact
The Supreme Court’s pending decision in Louisiana v. Callais could significantly affect this California lawsuit.
- What Section 2 Does
Section 2 of the VRA prohibits any voting practice or redistricting plan that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color” or membership in a language minority group. - What Louisiana v. Callais Is About
The Court is considering whether the intentional creation of a majority Black congressional district drawn to comply with Section 2 violates the Equal Protection and 15th Amendment guarantees.
Why This Matters for California
A. If Section 2 Is Overturned:
- Vote dilution claims under Section 2 vanish.
- Only constitutional racial gerrymandering theories remain.
- Prior majority-minority districts could be revisited.
B. If Section 2 Is Weakened:
- Dhillon Law Group could face tougher proof burdens, but they did state today that they are prepared to change the direction of the case.
- Focus shifts to whether race predominated in line drawing.
- The Dhillon Law Group’s constitutional theory still proceeds.
If the Court in Louisiana v. Callais limits or strikes down Section 2, it will effectively decide how much if at all states can consider race when drawing districts. That ruling will set the boundaries for what California can argue in defending Proposition 50’s maps and for what Dhillon Law Group must prove to show they were unconstitutional.
The 14th and 15th Amendments were designed to guarantee equal citizenship and political participation without racial classifications. Drawing electoral lines based on assumptions about how individuals of a certain race will vote undermines that principle and the constitutional command that every citizen’s vote carry equal weight.
At its core, this legal battle is about how far the government can go in using race to shape political power.
For decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, especially Section 2 has allowed states to consider race when drawing voting districts, but only to fix proven racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court’s Thornburg v. Gingles’ decision created a framework for when that’s allowed, requiring real evidence that minority voters are being blocked from electing candidates of their choice.
The Dhillon Law Group’s lawsuit argues that California skipped that analysis. It claims the state used race first and asked legal questions later creating districts designed around Latino ethnicity without first proving any underlying problem of racial exclusion.This violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which demands that the law treat all citizens equally and that the state avoid racial classifications unless absolutely necessary.
At the same time, the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could rewrite the national rulebook on this issue. If the Court decides that Section 2 itself goes too far by requiring race conscious districting, it would mean that the very tool created in 1965 to supposedly combat racial discrimination in voting would be viewed as unconstitutional racial favoritism, Which is something I think the framers would agree with. That outcome would transform redistricting law across the country limiting when and how race can ever be used in drawing political maps.
Ultimately, I do not believe the framers of our Constitution and the authors of the amendments that followed ever intended for race to be the deciding factor in how Americans are represented. The promise of equal protection was meant to guarantee that every citizen’s vote carries the same weight, not to divide voters into racial categories. True equality under the law means not judging by the color of their skin. The courts now have the opportunity and the responsibility to reaffirm that fundamental principle.
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