A three-judge federal court in San Antonio on Friday rejected Attorney General Greg Abbott's request, made Wednesday, to suspend enforcement of its own interim Texas House and Senate redistricting plans.

The majority in the 2-1 vote wrote that the state's lawyers had confused key points of the Voting Rights Act and “misinterpreted” key case law throughout the map-drawing process.

“You have to show irreparable harm, and it's really pretty hard to show irreparable harm in an election,” said Michael Li, an elections law expert who has been closely tracking the redistricting trial. “The state's argument is the same argument that Democrats tried to use in 2004,” which the Supreme Court rejected.

Abbott said he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay.

Earlier Friday, Abbott slammed changes proposed by the same federal panel to the congressional map in a legal filing, claiming the court overstepped its bounds. Abbott accused it of “undermining the democratic process.”

The panel, which oversaw a key redistricting trial in San Antonio, proposed significant changes to the Legislature's congressional redistricting plan that could give Democrats three more congressional seats and put another three seats in play.

“A court's job is to apply the law, not to make policy,” lawyers for the state wrote in their filing. “A federal court lacks constitutional authority to interfere with the expressed will of the state Legislature unless it is compelled to remedy a specific, identifiable violation of law.”

Abbott also said he would ask for the court to stay its congressional plan if it is not substantially changed.

If the judges refuse, Abbott said, he'll take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new move comes as Republicans continue to tally the political damage from the court's redistricting maps for the Texas House and Senate, which preserved a Democratic senator's seat in Fort Worth and could put an additional six to 10 Texas House seats into play, including that of State Rep. Aaron Peña, R-Edinburg, who said Thursday he would not seek re-election.

Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said, “We cannot allow any map that so grossly misapplies federal law and continues a trend of inappropriately venturing into political policymaking to move forward unchallenged.”

The state's redistricting plans have come under fire from two federal panels — one in Washington and the other in San Antonio — and the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. Both three-judge panels contain two judges appointed by Republican presidents.

The crux of the dispute is whether the Legislature created enough majority-minority districts to reflect the state's minority-driven population boom.

Ninety percent of the state's population growth over the past decade came from minority populations, but only one of the state's four new congressional districts was designed to elect minority candidates, who are typically Democrats.

Minority groups, including the Mexican American Legislative Caucus and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, contend minorities actually saw no net gain in seats because a previous opportunity district was redesigned to help re-elect an incumbent Republican.

The GOP-dominated redistricting plan for the Texas House also reduced the number of opportunity districts for minority representation by combining Houston-area Democratic state Reps. Scott Hochberg and Hubert Vo into the same district. The court's interim map undid the combination.