NRF-Supported Voters Set to Appeal North Carolina Court’s Decision to Uphold Gerrymandered Maps
Washington, D.C. — Today, a three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court issued a decision in the case of Harper v. Hall, a lawsuit supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) that alleges that the congressional and state legislative maps enacted by the North Carolina General Assembly are partisan gerrymanders in violation of the North Carolina Constitution. The panel rejected the claims made by the Harper plaintiffs, as well as those of the other plaintiff groups before the court. This decision will be appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
“We are incredibly disappointed with the panel’s decision to uphold the gerrymandered congressional and state legislative maps and believe they have really gotten it wrong in this case,” said Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation and Policy for the NRF. “But the fight for fair maps in North Carolina is not over – this decision will be appealed. The egregiously gerrymandered districts put into place by the North Carolina General Assembly do not provide free and fair elections as the state constitution requires, and we will continue to push for the voters of this state to have their rights appropriately protected.”
During the trial in Wake County Superior Court, 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 presented strong evidence 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 shown 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 the 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.
###
Contact: Brooke Lillard | Lillard@redistrictingfoundation.org