SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS VOTING MAPS

Justices won't stop California's redrawn district lines, denying an emergency appeal.

- DAVID G. SAVAGE

ETHAN SWOPE Associated Press GOV. GAVIN Newsom campaigns last year for Proposition 50, the measure to redraw voting districts.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that California this fall may use its new election map, which is expected to send five more Democrats to Congress.

With no dissents, the justices rejected emergency appeals from California Republicans and President Trump’s lawyers, who claimed the map was a racial gerrymander to benefit Latinos, not a partisan effort to bolster Democrats.

“Donald Trump said he was ‘entitled’ to five more congressional seats in Texas. He started this redistricting war. He lost, and he'll lose again in November,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in response to the court’s decision.

Trump’s lawyers supported the California Republicans and filed a Supreme Court brief asserting that “California’s recent redistricting is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

They pointed to statements from Paul Mitchell, who led the effort to redraw the districts, that he hoped to “bolster” Latino representatives in the Central Valley.

But the court turned down the appeal in a one-line order with no explanation.

It was unusual for the Justice Department and the U.S. solicitor general to intervene in a state election dispute, especially after staking out the opposite view in a similar dispute from Texas.

Trump’s lawyers said the Texas redistricting favoring Republicans should be upheld, but the California redistricting favoring Democrats should be blocked.