WASHINGTON -- Gerrymandering is a practice as old as the nation itself.

  • Paul Smith is preparing to argue a gerrymandering case involving North Carolina
  • Appeals court found the map to be racially unfair
  • Smith recently argued a similar case involving Wisconsin

It’s when congressional districts are crafted to make sure certain groups of people are either heard or ignored.           

“It's about as fundamentally opposed to democracy as you can imagine,” Paul Smith with the Campaign Legal Center said.

He recently argued the Wisconsin gerrymander case before the Supreme Court saying republicans drew district lines to give their party an unfair advantage in the state legislature. The court punted on that case citing a technicality.          

He’s now turning his attention to another one of instance in North Carolina.

"Basically it’s the same argument. You have 13 congressional districts in North Carolina, the republican-led state government set out to prove that they’d control 10,” he said.

The Tar Heel State has already been forced to redraw its district lines once after an appeals court found the map to be racially unfair. Now, a lower court says the new lines are unconstitutional because they disproportionately favor one party over another. But, will the nation’s highest bench agree?

Smith says the North Carolina case has something the Wisconsin case did not and that could be enough to convince the Supreme Court to give it a hearing.

"We have evidence and standing of individual harm in every district, so the initial stumbling block in the Wisconsin case isn’t really there in the North Carolina case," he said.          

Alan Morrison, who has argued cases before the high court, warns the justices can be unpredictable and may shy away if there’s any hint that they may need to punt again for technical reasons.

If they do take it up, Smith says the state could prove pivotal.       

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