(The Center Square) — A lawsuit brought against Governor Gavin Newsom and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the Prop. 50 election is getting its day in court — Dec. 15, 2025.
The court date was announced this week by the California Republican Party.
“I think Governor Newsom and the legislature have violated many different rules, as you know,” said state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach in an interview with The Center Square. “I’m glad they’re going to federal court because fundamentally, I think it’s wrong the way they drew the districts. It was against our constitution, and I hope they get a better result in the federal court than they did in the state court.”
The lawsuit, brought by Assemblyman David Tangipa, R-Fresno, and the U.S. Justice Department against Newsom and Weber, was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California on Oct. 13, according to a copy of the complaint. The complaint alleges that the redrawn congressional district maps used in the Proposition 50 election were redrawn based on race, and that race was used as a political proxy that resulted in a “rush-job rejiggering” of the Golden State’s district lines.
“California’s redistricting scheme is a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi in a Nov. 13 press release. “Governor Newsom’s attempt to entrench one-party rule and silence millions of Californians will not stand.”
Tangipa said the state needs a quick decision.
“The main reason why we believe this needs to be done expeditiously is because these maps need to be implemented sooner than later,” Tangipa told The Center Square on Thursday. “There’s an election coming next year, and we should be able to move fast and see if the state of California racially gerrymandered — and they did, because they said they did — and it should be fairly easy to move forward.”
When asked how much the lawsuit costs, Tangipa deferred to the lawyers on the case, which includes the Department of Justice. The U.S. Department of Justice was not available to answer calls from The Center Square on Thursday afternoon.
The California Republican Party was unavailable for comment before deadline on Thursday.
The lawsuit brought by Tangipa is one of at least two lawsuits brought against Newsom over the Proposition 50 election. The other suit, Noyes vs. Newsom, brought by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, alleges that the Prop. 50 maps were drawn with “illegal racial intent and with illegal racial considerations,” which the complaint for that suits says is a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits a denial of citizens’ rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and the Voting Rights Act forbids the enforcement of election procedures carried out with racial intent, according to the complaint.
“The California legislature crossed a red line when it redrew the map, violating Fifteenth Amendment provisions which prohibit denying the right to vote based on a citizen’s race or color,” J. Christian Adams, the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a Dec. 2 press release. “The US Constitution leaves no room for state officials to sort votes by race.”
One of the two law firms on that lawsuit, Benbrook Law Group, out of Newport Beach, Calif., deferred questions to the other law firm on the case, the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Lawyers from the Public Interest Legal Foundation were unavailable to answer phone calls about how much that lawsuit cost on Thursday.
While legislators who sit on elections committees in both chambers of the state legislature weren’t available on Thursday, Newsom’s office issued a statement about Tangipa’s lawsuit moving forward in court.
“This looks like another loser lawsuit filed in an attempt to silence the overwhelming will of California voters – to respond to a partisan power grab by President Trump with an overtly partisan gerrymander to favor Democrats,” said Brandon Richards, deputy director for rapid response for Newsom’s office in an emailed statement to The Center Square. “We are confident that the court will see what every voter knew when Prop 50 overwhelmingly passed last month.”
The special Prop. 50 election, held Nov. 4, was California’s response to Texas’ own mid-decade redistricting effort, which heavily favored Republicans and gave the party an opportunity to pick up five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 mid-term election. Prop. 50 passed with 64.4% of the vote, with 7,452,945 for and 4,116,810 against, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the Prop. 50 election cost California’s taxpayers $200,000. That was much lower than critics of the election estimated.
