NRF-Supported Voters Appeal Case Against Gerrymandered Maps to the North Carolina Supreme Court
Washington, D.C. — Last night, with the support of the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), voters filed their merits brief to the North Carolina Supreme Court appealing a trial court decision that upheld gerrymandered congressional and state legislative maps.
In the filing, plaintiffs in Harper v. Hall asked the North Carolina Supreme Court to strike down the newly-enacted congressional and state legislative maps as partisan gerrymanders in violation of the Free Elections, Equal Protection, and Freedom of Speech and Assembly Clauses of the North Carolina Constitution. In order to ensure that new plans are in place before the candidate filing period reopens on February 24, plaintiffs additionally requested that the North Carolina Supreme Court appoint a special master to either draw remedial maps in the first instance or, at the very least, to review any remedial plans developed by the North Carolina General Assembly.
“The North Carolina Supreme Court should vindicate voters’ rights by determining once and for all that partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution,” said Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation and Policy for the NRF. “The trial court has already found, as a factual matter, that the enacted maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders; it is now up to the high court to strike those maps down. North Carolinians deserve free and fair elections – as their constitution requires – and we are continuing to push for the voters of this state to have their rights protected.”
In its January 11 decision, the trial court found that the congressional map “is the product of intentional, pro-Republican partisan redistricting” and the state legislative maps “are extreme outliers that ‘systematically favor the Republican Party to an extent which is rarely, if ever, seen in the non-partisan collection of maps.’” The court noted that Republican map drawers cracked Democratic voters from competitive districts, to then pack them into either heavily Republican or heavily Democratic districts – a key characteristic of “intentional partisan redistricting.”
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, these maps could have only resulted from an intentional effort to secure a manipulated Republican advantage.
The trial also 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.
Oral argument is scheduled to take place before the state Supreme Court at 9:30 AM ET on Wednesday, February 2. To read the Harper plaintiffs’ opening brief on appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court, click here.
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Contact: Brooke Lillard | Lillard@redistrictingfoundation.org