RALEIGH - A new lawsuit looks for state Senate and House districts to be redrawn.

  • Common Cause North Carolina and the NC Democratic Party are suing legislative leaders and the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement.
  • They say the districts are gerrymandered. 
  • Common Cause hopes new maps are in place by the 2020 election. 

Common Cause North Carolina and the NC Democratic party are suing legislative leaders and members of the State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement saying the districts violate the state's constitution because they are gerrymandered.

“When one party wins the most seats with the fewest votes, that’s what partisan gerrymandering does, it rigs elections and it’s wrong no matter which party does the deed,” says Common Cause Executive Director Bob Phillips.

Phillips believes this is the first time in the state's history that a partisan gerrymandering challenge has been field on state legislative maps in any court. 

Common Cause has also been fighting congressional maps and that case is now in the US Supreme Court.

Cary resident and voter Becky Harper says of the maps, “Yes both parties have been guilty of this. It’s particularly egregious now because of the technology allowing pin point precision but I think that everyone’s vote should count. I’m looking for fair and impartial districts so that there is genuine competition between candidates, between ideas and that we find candidates that have to find middle ground with one another.”

And Stanton Jones who is an attorney at Arnold and Porter law firm in DC which won a gerrymader case in Pennsylvania courts says, “North Carolina’s state legislative maps are among the worst partisan gerrymanders in North Carolina’s history and indeed in American history. In drawing the maps republicans in the general assembly discriminated against democratic voters on the basis of political beliefs and prior votes. And this practice of partisan gerrymandering needs to stop.”

Still not everyone has a problem with how the districts are separated.

NC GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse says, "Only North Carolina Democrats would file a lawsuit to overturn districts that they just won."

Common Cause wants new legislative maps in place for the 2020 election with an ultimate goal of getting a ruling from the NC Supreme Court.