A U.S. district court determined Monday that North Carolina’s congressional district map favors Republicans and is unconstitutional, posing the possibility of having the congressional districts redrawn ahead of the midterm elections in November.
The three-judge panel ruled that North Carolina’s congressional map defies Article I, the First Amendment, and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment — a decision matching one that had been reached in January. The case was sent back to North Carolina after the Supreme Court ruled in a Wisconsin gerrymandering case that the plaintiffs did not prove they had legal standing to bring the case.
Recommended Stories
“It may be possible for the State to conduct a general election using a constitutionally compliant districting plan without holding a primary election. Or, it may be viable for the State to conduct a primary election on November 6, 2018, using a constitutionally compliant congressional districting plan, and then conduct a general election sometime before the new Congress is seated in January 2019,” the North Carolina court wrote in the opinion.
The districts were established in 2016 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina determined two districts were “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.” The districts were used in the 2016 election, but Common Cause and the League of Women Voters accused the new districts of being partisan gerrymanders in a subsequent lawsuit.
The case may head to the Supreme Court if North Carolina appeals the decision, but the congressional districts will definitively be discarded after this year.
