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(Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court on Monday sent back to a lower court a ruling that North Carolina Republicans had enacted election codes in state constituencies to give their party an unfair advantage.
The court of first instance will have to decide whether the plaintiffs have the appropriate legal capacity to present the case.
The Supreme Court recently examined the issue of partisan gerrymandering in the Wisconsin and Maryland cases. The court never found a card so infected with politics that it violated the constitutional rights of voters.
But the judges did not rule on the substance of the matter. The court said the Wisconsin plaintiffs did not have the proper legal standing and that the Maryland case was in too preliminary a phase.
The Republican-run legislature in North Carolina has put up a map under which Republicans hold 10 of the 13 congressional seats. The dominance of the GOP over the congressional delegation belies the recent history of North Carolina as a state of battle. He has a Democratic governor and Attorney General, who refused to defend the cards.
[[[[Efforts to limit partisan gerrymandering at the Supreme Court]
When a panel of three judges invalidated the congressional district map, he became the first to make a congressional map on the pretext that he was rigged in favor of a political party.
North Carolina has a past in the Supreme Court, with redistricting plans shot down as racial gerrymanders. So, when the state legislature passed new plans in 2016, Republican leaders made it clear that they were drawing the lines to help their party, instead of basing their decisions on race data.
"I think the election of Republicans is better than the election of Democrats," said Rep. David Lewis, a Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly. "So I drew this map to help promote what I think is better for the country."
He added, "I propose that we draw the cards to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats because I do not believe it's possible to draw a card with 11 Republicans and 2 Democrats."
When voters went to the ballot boxes that fell, the result was exactly as Lewis had predicted, even though Republican candidates only earned 53% of the statewide vote.
The case is Rucho c. Common cause.
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