North Carolina Supreme Court Tosses New District Maps
RALEIGH, N.C. — A divided North Carolina Supreme Court tossed new congressional and state legislative maps Friday evening, holding that mapmakers so skewed their work the results went from merely partisan to wholly unconstitutional.
The 4-3 vote was divided along party lines, with all four Democratic justices on the seven-member judicial panel agreeing the maps laying out the state General Assembly and congressional districts had to go.
In the decision, the majority said, the Republican lawmakers in charge of the redistricting process had given themselves such a sizable advantage in the makeup of the new districts that they were unconstitutional “beyond a reasonable doubt” under the free elections clause, the equal protection clause, the free speech clause and the freedom of assembly clause of North Carolina’s constitution.
Writing in dissent for the Republican justices on the court, Chief Justice Paul Newby said it was the majority that went too far because the state constitution did not explicitly give the court the authority to override the legislature on redistricting.
As a result, he said, the majority’s ruling “violates separation of powers by effectively placing responsibility for redistricting with the judicial branch, not the legislative branch as expressly provided in our constitution.”
The now voided maps would have effectively guaranteed Republicans control of at least 10 of the state’s 14 House seats despite the fact voter registration in North Carolina is now about equally split between the two parties.
The ruling requires the Republican-dominated legislature not only to submit new maps to the court, but to provide a statistical analysis to show “a significant likelihood that the districting plan will give the voters of all political parties substantially equal opportunity to translate votes into seats.”
In a series of tweets, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, called the ruling “fantastic news for voters and the health of our democracy.”
“Under our constitution, political power must be ‘vested in and derived from the people’ and our government must be ‘founded upon their will only,’” Stein wrote. “Our elected leaders flout that principle when they seek to perpetuate their power irrespective of the will of the voters.
“Our government must be of, by, and for the people, not of, by, and for one political party,” he continued. “That’s why the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.
“Partisan gerrymandering is offensive to democracy; it’s also contrary to our fundamental constitutional rights,” he concluded.
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