NRF Statement on the Conclusion of North Carolina Gerrymandering Trial

For Immediate Release
January 6, 2022
Contact
Brooke Lillard
lillard@redistrictingfoundation.org

Washington, D.C. — Today, the trial in Harper v. Hall concluded before a three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court. The suit establishes that the congressional and state legislative maps enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly are partisan gerrymanders in violation of the Free Elections, Equal Protection, and Freedom of Speech and Assembly Clauses of the North Carolina Constitution. The National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) is supporting North Carolina voters who filed the case in November of last year.

“The conclusion of the trial proceedings over North Carolina’s new congressional and state legislative districts marks an important moment in the fight for fair maps in the state. Testimony presented by both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ witnesses has shown that the enacted maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders,” said Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation and Policy for the NRF. “Prior to the trial, and even during it, Republican lawmakers claimed they ran a transparent process that incorporated public input, but now North Carolinians know the truth: that ‘transparency’ was a ruse. As the House Rules Committee Chairman testified under oath, at least some of the maps were drawn based on secret ‘concept maps’ that have since been destroyed. Transparency was promised, but that promise was not kept.”

During the trial, the Harper plaintiffs presented four nonpartisan experts in a variety of fields, including computer simulation and political science, who consistently concluded based on their independent evaluations that the congressional and state legislative maps are extreme partisan outliers when compared to unbiased plans. Accordingly, they concluded that these maps could have only resulted from an intentional effort to secure a manipulated Republican advantage.

Specifically, the congressional map enacted by the Republican legislature was found to be the most pro-Republican option possible, with a level of packing and cracking that did not occur in any other unbiased computer simulations. That map would reliably give Republicans 10 safe seats out of 14 total congressional districts. The plaintiffs’ evidence on the congressional map was unrebutted – the legislative defendants did not present any expert analysis at all to even try to refute plaintiffs’ allegations with respect to that map.

At the state legislative level, an expert who testified on behalf of the legislative defendants actually reinforced the analysis of the plaintiffs’ experts. He admitted that his simulations also indicated that the state House and Senate plans, as compared to thousands of simulated maps drawn by a computer, were among the most Republican-favoring of possible maps, and were partisan outliers.

In addition to informative expert testimony, depositions exposed how the enacted state House map was really drawn. Under oath, state Rep. Destin Hall, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, and the Republican legislator who primarily drew the state House map, admitted he relied on secret “concept maps” inside and outside of the public map-drawing room. This contradicts the claims made by Republican legislators to have conducted the “most transparent” process ever and to have prohibited the use of political and racial data to draw maps. Despite these revelations, the defendants’ witnesses, including Rep. Hall and state Sen. Ralph Hise, gave only perfunctory, post-hoc rationalizations for the gerrymandered districts. Other Republican legislators responsible for drawing maps did not testify, citing legislative privilege.

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