The North Carolina Supreme Court tossed out the state’s redistricting maps Friday, finding that the new electoral maps violated the state constitution.
The order sends the GOP-led General Assembly back to the drawing board to make new maps for the U.S. House and the North Carolina House and Senate.
The General Assembly has until Feb. 18, two weeks from the order, to submit new maps to a panel of three judges in Wake County Superior Court. The lower court will need to approve the new maps by Feb. 23.
Redistricting comes every 10 years when states get new population numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. In North Carolina, the party in control of the General Assembly is in charge of drawing new districts for congressional seats and the state House and Senate.
Redistricting has traditionally been done behind closed doors in Raleigh. This year, the process played out in open committee rooms in the General Assembly, with legislators drawing maps on computer screens that were visible to the public online and in the rooms.
Republican legislative leaders said redistricting this year was the most transparent it had ever been in North Carolina. The criteria for making the maps specifically said the committees would not use data from past elections or on race.
But during the January trial on the redistricting cases in Wake County, Rep. Destin Hall, a Republican who led the redistricting committee in the House, admitted to using reference maps drawn outside the committee room. That muddied the claims of transparency and not using partisan data to draw the maps.
Both Republicans and Democrats in North Carolina have faced accusations and lawsuits over gerrymandering over the decades.
Gerrymandering means drawing the maps in a way that favors one race or political party over another. Gerrymandering works by either packing voters of a particular party or race into one district or breaking them up to dilute their voting power.
Nonpartisan groups that analyzed the new maps found they heavily favored Republicans. In a state that is more or less evenly split between Republican and Democratic-leaning voters, the GOP would win at least 10 of 14 congressional seats and could potentially win supermajorities in the state House and Senate.
The court split along party lines in a 4-3 ruling. The Democratic majority on the court found that the redistricting maps are unconstitutional because they heavily favor Republican voters. The court found that the maps violated the equal protection clause, the free speech clause and the freedom of assembly clause in the North Carolina Constitution.
“The General Assembly violates the North Carolina Constitution when it deprives a voter of his or her rights to substantially equal voting power on the basis of partisan affiliation,” the order states.
A dissenting opinion, written by Justice Paul Newby and signed by all three Republicans on the board, argues that it’s not up to the court to toss out maps drawn by the legislature.
The trial court, with two Republicans on the three-judge panel, found partisan gerrymandering in the maps, but decided that was not illegal.
The question before the state Supreme Court was whether or partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution. A majority of the court found it did.
The ruling, Newby writes, "violates separation of powers by effectively placing responsibility for redistricting with the judicial branch, not the legislative branch as expressly provided in our constitution."
He cites a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on another case over redistricting in North Carolina. In 2019, the federal Supreme Court found that partisan gerrymandering was not a matter for the federal courts. Questions over whether gerrymandering based on political affiliation is legal or not should be left to state legislatures and courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.
The ruling issued Friday included a nine-page order from the court, issued without a full opinion because the case was heard on a tight timeline. The majority on the court said they would issue an opinion on the case in the future.
Republican legislative leaders can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The General Assembly has until Feb. 18 to submit new maps to the lower court, a three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court. That gives the legislature two weeks to get new maps completed.
The Supreme Court order says legislators has to “adhere to neutral districting criteria” and not base the new maps off partisan criteria.
Republican leaders in the General Assembly have not said how they plan to redraw the maps. On Monday, Democratic leaders in the legislature said they have not heard from the Republicans on how the process will work in the tight timeline laid out by the Supreme Court.
The court order says any of the parties in the lawsuits, including the plaintiffs who sued over the maps, can submit new maps for consideration.
If the new maps don’t pass muster with the trial court, or if they do not submit new maps by the Feb. 18 deadline, the three-judge panel in Wake County will select the maps. The trial court has until Feb. 23 to pick new maps for the 2022 elections.
If everything stays on track with the timeline from the Supreme Court, filing for the 2022 elections will begin Feb. 24.
The primary election is currently scheduled for May 17. The primary was originally scheduled for March, but it was delayed when the state Supreme Court gave the greenlight for the lawsuits over redistricting to go ahead.
As of now, it looks like the primary will continue as scheduled in May. It's unclear what could happen to the timeline if legislative leaders appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.