The State Supreme Court said maps of the state’s 14 House districts and state legislative districts violated guarantees of free elections, speech and assembly.
The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday upended Republican efforts to lock in political dominance in the state, saying that congressional and state legislative maps skewed to favor the party were partisan gerrymanders that violated the State Constitution.
The ruling requires the Republican-dominated legislature not only to submit new maps to the court, but to offer a range of statistical analyses to show “a significant likelihood that the districting plan will give the voters of all political parties substantially equal opportunity to translate votes into seats” in elections.
The requirement rebuffed the argument against redrawing the maps that the legislature offered in oral arguments before the court this week: that the court had no right to say whether and when political maps cross the line from acceptable partisanship into unfairness.
The decision not only sets a precedent for judging the legality of future maps in the state, but could play an important role in the struggle for control of the House of Representatives in elections this November. The Republican-drawn maps had effectively allotted the party control of at least 10 of the state’s 14 House seats, even though voters statewide are roughly equally divided between the two parties.
