AUSTIN — Fort Worth’s Marc Veasey said he unquestionably plans to seek reelection to his U.S. House seat after a federal judicial panel on Tuesday blocked Texas’ latest congressional redistricting plan.
“I’m feeling upbeat. I’m encouraged,” Veasey told the Fort Worth Report after the three-judge panel threw out the redistricting map that cut Veasey’s District 33 congressional seat out of Tarrant County.
The preliminary injunction temporarily halted plans by Gov. Greg Abbott and the Republican-led Legislature. The court said the months-old redistricting plan wrongly undercuts voting strength for Blacks and Latinos and cannot be used for next year’s elections.
Abbott, following the wishes of President Donald Trump, pushed the plan through a special legislative session this summer against Democratic objections that included many of them scrambling to other states in an unsuccessful effort to block passage of the new map. The plan was designed to potentially give the president a pick-up of five GOP congressional seats from Texas.
Veasey, whose congressional district spans parts of Tarrant and Dallas counties, was one of several Democratic incumbents whose congressional base would have been uprooted by the plan. District 33 would have been shifted solely to Dallas County in the map the judges blocked.
The three-judge decision directs congressional candidates to run under maps drawn in 2021. Abbott pledges to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Asked if he plans to seek reelection from the congressional seat he has held since 2013, Veasey responded, “Yes, sir, I’ll run in my current District 33.”
Veasey acknowledged he was considering other political options, including running for another congressional seat but is now laser-focused on the 33rd district.
“Had the Republicans won their case today, I was looking at other options,” he said.
The incumbent lawmaker said he is “cautiously optimistic” that Tuesday’s ruling will hold.
Abbott reasserted in a statement that the redistricting plans were drawn “to better reflect Texans’ conservative voting preferences and for no other reason.”
“Any claim that these maps are discriminatory is absurd and unsupported by the testimony during ten days of hearings,” the governor said in his statement. “This ruling is clearly erroneous and undermines the authority the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Texas Legislature by imposing a different map by judicial edict.”
In issuing the preliminary injunction against the mid-decade redistricting plan, the three-judge, Republican panel set aside the map for use in the fast-approaching 2026 elections. The judges ordered that Texas congressional elections be conducted under the lines drawn in 2021.
Ruling in favor of six plaintiff groups in a lengthy opinion, the panel noted that there was little doubt that racial factors shaped the congressional map.
“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” the judges declared in an opening sentence. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
The redistricting plan, which aimed at potentially giving President Donald Trump five new Texas Republican seats in Congress, emerged from a special legislative session in August. Democratic legislators fiercely opposed the effort and staged a weekslong boycott by fleeing to other states.
Sentiments shifted dramatically after Tuesday’s ruling, with Abbott vigorously denouncing the decision and Democrats praising it.
Veasey acknowledged that “this fight is far from over” as Abbott vowed that the state of Texas “will swiftly appeal to the United States Supreme Court.”
The El Paso judges also have been reviewing state and legislative districts from the 2021 plan — including the redrawn Texas Senate District 10 that includes part of Tarrant County.
It is unclear when a ruling on that aspect of the state’s redistricting plans will be made. The panel is made up of U.S. Judges Jeffrey Brown, David Guaderrama and Jerry Smith. Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote the Nov. 18 opinion, according to news reports.
Dave Montgomery is an Austin-based freelance reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
The Fort Worth Report’s Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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Great Job David Montgomery & the Team @ Fort Worth Report for sharing this story.
