Maryland‘s Legislature has been sent back to the drawing board for its congressional map after a state court ruled Friday that the recently enacted map unfairly favored Democrats.
The victory for the GOP came from the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County and will likely be appealed. But if it holds, the Legislature will have until March 30 to develop a new map more palatable to jurists.
“Based upon the evidence adduced at trial, proved that the 2021 plan was drawn with ‘partisanship as a predominant intent, to the exclusion of traditional redistricting criteria by the party in power, to suppress the voice of Republican voters,'” Judge Lynne Battaglia wrote in a 94-page ruling.
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Battaglia, who served as the chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski and as President Bill Clinton’s U.S. Attorney for Maryland, enjoined the map from being used in the midterm elections, determining that it was in violation of Maryland’s Constitution and Declaration of Rights by subverting “the will of those governed.”
Analysts believed that the new map could make the Republican-controlled seat competitive in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7–1 in the congressional seat count. This means that Democrats currently control 88% of the congressional delegation in a state where Biden carried 65% of the vote in the 2020 election.
Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University, testified that the reconfigured map would make District 1, the sole GOP-held seat, more competitive for Democrats but maintained that Republicans would still likely emerge victorious there in 2022.
Maryland Republicans received support from outside figures such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld who filed a brief in favor of their crusade to strike down the map.
“To call this a big deal would be the understatement of the century,” Fair Maps Maryland proclaimed in a statement after Battaglia ruled in its favor. “Judge Battaglia’s ruling confirms what we have all known for years — Maryland is ground zero for gerrymandering, our districts and political reality reek of it, and there is abundant proof that it is occurring. Marylanders have been fighting for free and fair elections for decades and for the first time in our state’s shameful history of gerrymandering, we are at the precipice of ending it.”
Last December, both the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates overrode a veto from Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to enact their congressional map. Hogan blasted the map, calling on President Joe Biden to sue over the lines. While the Biden administration did not oblige, Fair Maps Maryland, a nonprofit group in the state, filed a lawsuit against the map last month.
A hearing on the review of the new map will take place April 1.
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Last week, the Court of Appeals of Maryland extended the deadline for candidates to file to April 15 and delayed the primary election in the state from June 28 to July 19. The move came in response to litigation over the congressional map. If Friday’s decision is appealed as is expected, the Maryland Court of Appeals will have the final say in the matter.
Republicans in Maryland have aspired to get the state’s congressional seat count to be proportional with the statewide voter breakdown, a move that would net them one or two congressional seats. The state now joins Florida, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Louisiana in not having legally binding congressional maps, according to FiveThirtyEight. About a dozen other states have pending litigation of their maps.
