Harris v. Cooper
North Carolina
Harris v. Cooper (closed)
The NRF helped support litigation leading to a Supreme Court victory in 2017, in which the Court held that two districts in North Carolina’s 2011 congressional plan were racial gerrymanders and required the state to produce a new map.
While the appeal to the Supreme Court was pending in 2016, the state legislature drew a remedial map by replacing the unconstitutional racial gerrymander with an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The NRF-supported plaintiffs objected, but the trial court rejected the objections, noting that the lack of trial record on the question of partisan gerrymandering prevented it from striking down the legislature’s plan. In June 2018, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the district court’s determination in this regard.
The 2016 remedial map from Harris v. Cooper is now the subject of separate litigation in the consolidated cases Rucho v. Common Cause and Rucho v. League of Women Voters.