Lawsuit challenging NC congressional election map arrives on opening day of candidate filing

Eighteen black and Latino plaintiffs working with Democratic lawyer Marc Elias’ law firm have filed a federal lawsuit to block North Carolina’s new congressional map. They took their case to court on the same afternoon that candidate filing began for the state’s 2024 elections.

The suit specifically targets the new 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th Congressional Districts as “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.” They ask a federal judge to declare that the congressional map “discriminates against minority voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” They seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the congressional map.

“Plaintiffs bring this action to challenge North Carolina’s 2023 Congressional Plan, which was enacted as Senate Bill 757 on October 25, 2023, and represents the third time in as many years that the North Carolina General Assembly has drawn congressional districts that disadvantage minority voters,” according to the complaint filed Monday in US District Court.

“North Carolina gained a congressional district after the 2020 Census, almost entirely due to an increase in the state’s minority population,” the complaint argued. “But instead of granting minority voters the benefit of the state’s increased representation, the General Assembly majority capitalized on that gain to increase their own power and decrease minority voting power.”

“By strategically packing and cracking North Carolina’s minority voters, the 2023 Congressional Plan entrenches the state’s white majority and erases the gains made by voters of color in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles,” the lawsuit continued.

“The 2023 Congressional Plan is just the most recent enactment in North Carolina’s long history of discriminatory voting laws and redistricting plans,” plaintiffs argued. “North Carolina’s minority populations have long suffered from voting discrimination and vote dilution and as a result have endured persistent disparities in political representation.”

The suit names Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, as lead defendant. Hall chairs the state House’s redistricting committee. Plaintiffs also name as co-defendants the three state Senate redistricting chairmen, the top officers in the state House and Senate, and the State Board of Elections and its individual members.

Plaintiffs seek a hearing before a three-judge panel “as this action challenges ‘the constitutionality of the apportionment of congressional districts.’”

The suit argues “due to the General Assembly majority’s unflinching commitment to entrenching their party’s political power at the expense of voters of color, North Carolina’s congressional map has been redrawn no fewer than four times in the past three years.”

The map used in 2022, drawn by experts working with court-appointed “special masters,” produced a US House delegation with seven Democrats and seven Republicans. Analysts have estimated that the new map is likely to give Republicans a 10-4 advantage.

“The General Assembly waited nearly five months to take up the task of redistricting again” after a state Supreme Court ruling threw out the 2022 map. The suit does not explain why plaintiffs waited more than a month after the approval of that new map to file their legal challenge.

The post Lawsuit challenging NC congressional election map arrives on opening day of candidate filing first appeared on Carolina Journal.