• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. redistricting>

Gerrymandering opponents to expand the fight after North Carolina victory

David Hawkings
September 04, 2019
Gerrymandering opponents to expand the fight after North Carolina victory

While anti-gerrymandering forces will work to ensure politicians follow up on the North Carolina court's ruling, they are also starting to plan for action in other states.

arcgis.com

Exultant crusaders against partisan gerrymandering are vowing to hold North Carolina politicians' feet to the fire until the state's legislative maps are drawn more fairly — while also looking beyond the borders. They are hailing a state court's redistricting decision as a landmark ruling with the potential to benefit their cause across the country.

Just 10 weeks ago, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution provides no opening for challenges in the federal courts to even the most brazenly partisan mapmaking. But in a dramatic reversal of fortune for political cartographers — and not just in North Carolina — a bipartisan panel of three judges in Raleigh ruled unanimously Tuesday that the state House and state Senate lines are so contorted to favor Republicans that they violate a broad array of Democratic voters' rights under the state's constitution.

The GOP leaders in the state capital, who have been contesting almost a dozen different anti-gerrymandering lawsuits (some successfully alleging racial motivation) while hoping to keep their district lines intact, announced they were at last conceding defeat. Rather than appeal to the state's top court — a long-shot prospect given its lopsided Democratic majority — they said they would get to work on new maps right away.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

"Nearly a decade of relentless litigation has strained the legitimacy of this state's institutions, and the relationship between its leaders, to the breaking point," said Phil Berger, the Republican majority leader of the state Senate. "It's time to move on."


The judges gave the legislators two weeks to come up with new maps to be used in 2020 and said they could not take into account any data about election results. They also ordered that the maps be drawn entirely in public, with the computer displays visible to all.

"What's crucial now is ensuring that the legislature fully complies with the court's order and draws new legislative districts in a timely fashion, with full transparency and robust public input, absolutely free from gerrymandering," said Bob Phillips, executive director of North Carolina's chapter of Common Cause, a lead plaintiff in the case.

Beyond that, democracy reform advocates said they would begin strategizing on when and where to replicate their newfound path to victory in the courts — and where to pursue other options. "The fight will go on in state courts, in legislatures, and through ballot initiatives to ensure every voter across this country has a voice at the polls," said Common Cause's national president, Karen Hobert Flynn.

The North Carolina ruling said the maps violated the state Constitution's clauses guaranteeing equal protection under the law, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The heart of the 357-page decision, though, was a broad interpretation of the five words comprising Section 10 of the document: "All elections shall be free."

That language "guarantees that all elections must be conducted freely and honestly to ascertain, fairly and truthfully, the will of the people," the judges wrote. "It is not the free will of the people that is fairly ascertained through extreme partisan gerrymandering. Rather, it is the carefully crafted will of the map drawer that predominates."

While the federal courts have no role in refereeing such disputes, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority in June, state constitutions could "provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply."

Roughly half of state constitutions have free election clauses, meaning their state would theoretically be open to an argument similar to what worked in North Carolina. In addition, almost all the state constitutions have a right-to-vote guarantee that could be the provision on which partisan gerrymandering opponents hang their cases.

And, even if there's no rush to the courthouses with such arguments, the prospect that state courts might step in to stop the most egregiously partisan maps could prompt future political line drawers to take a somewhat less aggressive approach.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court cited provisions of its Constitution in striking down a partisan gerrymander in 2018. The court threw out the state's GOP-dominated congressional map, enabling Democrats to gain a handful of seats.

The North Carolina judges set a tight Sept. 18 deadline because legislative candidates have already declared and the first round of primaries is scheduled for February. The maps will then need to be drawn once again — this time, along with every other electoral map in the country — when the 2020 census provides the population details to shape the contours for the coming decade.

While both parties gerrymander to benefit their continuation in power whenever they can, Republicans have had more opportunity to do so in recent years because they control more statehouses than the Democrats.

Tuesday's ruling did not cover the congressional boundaries, which are also drawn to favor the GOP, and so next week's special election to fill one of the House seats will not be disrupted. But attorneys for the winning side said the decision's reasoning would also apply to the map of the state's 13 U.S. House seats and that a lawsuit to strike down that map was being contemplated.

The House map has routinely produced 10 Republican winners. And all decade, Republicans were consistently able to win at least three-fifths of the seats in both of the state's legislative chambers despite only winning about half of the total statewide vote. The GOP majorities were veto-proof until after last year's election, when they dipped to 54 percent of state House seats and 58 percent of state Senate seats — even though Democratic candidates won a majority of votes statewide.

From Your Site Articles
  • Expressing your anger at gerrymandering? There's a font for that ... ›
  • Partisan gerrymander landmark: N.C. court says state districts ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • A North Carolina court just threw out Republicans' gerrymandered ... ›
  • North Carolina court strikes down Republicans' partisan gerrymander. ›
  • North Carolina judges slam GOP gerrymandering in stinging ruling ... ›
redistricting

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff

What "Progress" should look like, and what we get wrong

Damien De Pyle

The long kiss goodnight: Nancy Pelosi and the protracted decay of public office

Kevin Frazier

Demanding corporate responsibility for food system challenges

C.Anne Long
latest News

Societal disruption: Artificial intelligence

Kevin Frazier
4h

The “United” States aren’t any more

James C. Nelson
4h

Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Our Staff
5h

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Joe Weston
22 September

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Leland R. Beaumont
22 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September

Podcast: Defending the founding principles of our government

Our Staff
07 September
Recommended
Societal disruption: Artificial intelligence

Societal disruption: Artificial intelligence

Contributors
The “United” States aren’t any more

The “United” States aren’t any more

Big Picture
Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Big Picture
Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Pop Culture
Prioritizing the grand challenges

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Big Picture
Podcast: All politics is local

Podcast: All politics is local

Big Picture