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Protesters against gerrymandering at a rally that took place in March 2019 coincided with Supreme Court hearings in important redistricting cases. After the court ruled that the federal judiciary has no role to play in political redistricting cases, lawsuits are focused on state courts.
Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
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Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
Protesters against gerrymandering at a rally that took place in March 2019 coincided with Supreme Court hearings in important redistricting cases. After the court ruled that the federal judiciary has no role to play in political redistricting cases, lawsuits are focused on state courts.
Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images
A few weeks after the United States Supreme Court ruled that federal courts could not intervene in cases where state legislators had drawn aggressive political boundaries to help one political party at the expense of another, a new one. Opening front in the re-constituency fights opens Monday in an audience hall in North Carolina.
The case is likely to significantly alter the way political cards are established in North Carolina and could serve as a model for court challenges in other states. It could also lead to the last claim of partisan gerrymandering – a tradition of American politics that goes back more than two centuries.
"There are many issues in North Carolina and at the national level," said Michael Li, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, who is working on the redistribution of cases and described the North Carolina legislative maps as among the most unbalanced country.
In the mid-term elections of 2018, candidates to the Republican state legislature received less than half of the vote. However, in the state Senate, they won 58% of the seats (29 out of 50). And in the House, they hold 54% of the seats (65 out of 120). With regard to the congressional districts of North Carolina, the Democrats won 50% of the vote and 23% of the seats.
If the advocacy groups that challenged the legislative constituencies of the North Carolina states were successful, the cards could be redrawn in time for the 2020 elections in a politically very divided state. This would give the Democrats a better chance of winning at least one of the two houses of the legislature and give them the opportunity to participate in the redistricting process that begins in 2021.
"We have always had an imperfect process pre-ordering so many of our congressional and legislative elections," said Bob Phillips of Common Cause North Carolina, whose group has filed suit. "I believe that what is at stake is the beginning of the end of that."
The Common Cause Challenge contends that legislative maps were established to maximize the power of the GOP and violate the provisions of the state constitution guaranteeing the right to free election, freedom of assembly and equal protection .
"And what we are saying is that when mapmen set up districts solely on the basis of how people vote, it's a violation of all three," Philips said.
He added that this challenge is similar to a case of redistricting Pennsylvania supporters in 2016, when congressional cards were eventually overturned by the state's Supreme Court. These cards, also drawn by a legislature controlled by the GOP, gave Republicans a 12-6 advantage in the congressional delegation. Under the new cards used in 2018, the delegation was also divided.
The Republicans took over the state legislature of North Carolina in 2010 for the first time in more than a century. The first set of legislative cards adopted by the Republicans in 2011 had been rejected for unconstitutional grymander. The US House Districts in North Carolina have also faced multiple challenges.
The trial will feature the recordings of an influential Republican consultant on redistricting who has contributed to the writing of many maps of North Carolina. Thomas Hofeller died in 2018 and his ex-daughter received many of his computer files and entrusted them to Common Cause. The state court ruled Friday that some of these files were admissible as evidence at trial.
The defendants in this case have always asserted that political data was only one factor used when drawing up these cards.
"The maps are based on very strict criteria that have been established by the [state] before the courts years ago, "said Republican state representative David Lewis, one of the defendants in this case, who played a central role in shaping the new constituency lines in the legislature.
"I do not believe that the [courts] are anxious to annoy them. I therefore hope that the three-judge court will put an end to this frivolous lawsuit, "Lewis said.
After last month's US Supreme Court ruling, Li said the federal government would oppose any legal challenge to the extreme partisanship of the gerrymands.
State constitutions, Li added, are "often broader and stronger to protect the law than the federal constitution, as a means to control the reading of the cards".
In addition to this dispute in North Carolina, redistricting issues are pending in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, the United States, and the United States. Alabama and Maryland.
This challenge is specific to the legislative constituencies of the state: 120 seats in the House and 50 in the Senate. A trial in three judges is expected to last two weeks. Then an appeal to the Supreme Court of the State seems inevitable.
While this group is made up of six Democrats and one Republican, all parties in the case warn that the outcome is anything but predetermined.
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