- Top North Carolina legislative leaders are asking a three-judge panel to throw out portions of two federal lawsuits challenging state congressional and legislative election maps.
- Both cases are scheduled for trial in June 2025 in Winston-Salem.
- In a court filing Friday, lawmakers challenge the plaintiffs' standing to challenge most districts cited in their lawsuits. Lawmakers also reject claims that legislative districts have too large a swing in ratios of voters to representatives.
North Carolina legislative leaders are asking a three-judge federal panel to throw out portions of two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional and legislative election maps.
Lawyers for top Republican lawmakers filed a motion Friday for partial summary judgment in the two suits, Williams v. Hall and North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. Berger. Both cases are scheduled for trial next summer.
“This motion affords the Court the opportunity to substantially narrow the issues for trial in these two consolidated redistricting cases, on two grounds,” legislators’ lawyers wrote. “First, the two sets of plaintiffs (Plaintiffs) lack standing to obtain relief against all but a small number of districts they challenge because no Plaintiff or disclosed member of a Plaintiff resides in 143 of the challenged districts.”
The motion also targets the NAACP and Common Cause’s ability to challenge certain districts.
“Further, insufficient evidence exists to support assertions of associational standing by the two organizational Plaintiffs (the Entity Plaintiffs), so vote-dilution claims against additional districts (which rest solely on associational standing) also should be dismissed,” lawmakers’ lawyers wrote.
Along with racial bias, the lawsuits claim “malapportionment.” That means there’s too much variation in the ratio of voters to elected representatives.
“[N]o evidence supports malapportionment claims against North Carolina’s legislative plans,” according to legislative leaders’ court filing. “Because deviations from perfect equality of district size in those plans are minor, the plans enjoy a strong presumption of constitutionality, and a challenge may proceed to trial only on evidence that illegitimate factors drove the deviations. No evidence could support a finding after trial in Plaintiffs’ favor, so summary judgment on the malapportionment claims is warranted.”
A Nov. 13 court filing signaled that lawmakers planned to file a motion that could resolve “some or all” claims made against the maps. The two lawsuits are scheduled for a June 2025 trial in Winston-Salem. A court order noted that a trial likely would last 10 days.
If the plaintiffs are successful in challenging state election maps, judges could force state lawmakers to draw new maps for the 2026 election cycle.
The two cases are consolidated before 4th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Allison Jones Rushing and US District Judges Richard Myers and Thomas Schroeder. Republican presidents appointed all three judges. Yet Rushing and Myers are participating in the panel thanks to appointments from 4th Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz. Former Democratic President Barack Obama appointed Diaz.
The three-judge panel agreed in March to consolidate the two cases. Republican state legislative leaders had requested the consolidation. Plaintiffs in both cases opposed the request.
An order from the three judges cited “common issues of fact and law” linked to the challenged congressional election map. Judges also determined that consolidation would promote “judicial economy and reduce the burden on the parties as a whole by avoiding duplication of effort.” The panel labeled the plaintiffs’ concerns about consolidation as “overstated.”
News of the consolidation arrived on the same day that Republican state legislative leaders filed a document in one of the suits, Williams v. Hall. In that case, plaintiffs working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm challenged North Carolina’s new congressional election map.
“The relief sought by Plaintiffs would involve unconstitutional racial gerrymanders because they request districts in which racial considerations predominate over traditional districting criteria,” wrote lawmakers’ lawyers.
Plaintiffs in the case titled Williams v. Hall filed suit on Dec. 4, 2023, against North Carolina’s new congressional election map. A separate case filed 15 days later, NC State Conference of the NAACP v. Berger, challenged the congressional map along with maps for the state House and Senate.
The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, left-of-center activist group Common Cause, and eight individual plaintiffs filed suit on Dec. 19, four days after candidate filing ended under the challenged maps.
“In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly redrew its state legislative and congressional plans to severely diminish the voting power of North Carolina’s Black voters, who comprise over 22% of residents in the state,” according to the 87-page complaint. “The General Assembly achieved this by intentionally dismantling existing and longstanding Black opportunity districts and diluting Black voting power in North Carolina’s historic Black Belt, which stretches across the northeastern portion of the state, and by selectively targeting Black voters in other areas of the state. The effect of these actions is to inequitably reduce the electoral influence of the Black voters of North Carolina in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the United States Constitution.”
Plaintiffs are working with lawyers from the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice, along with a law firm with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC.
The lawsuit says state legislators adopted their maps for state House, state Senate, and congressional races “using an intentionally rushed and deficient process that denied any opportunity for meaningful engagement and showed clear disregard for the interests, needs, and desires of North Carolina’s Black voters.”
In the Williams case, 18 black and Latino plaintiffs working with Elias’ law firm target only the congressional map. They took their case to court on the same afternoon that candidate filing began for the state’s 2024 elections.
Plaintiffs ask a federal court to declare that the congressional map “discriminates against minority voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
A third federal redistricting lawsuit challenges two state Senate districts. That case, Pierce v. NC State Board of Elections, is scheduled for trial in February.
A fourth redistricting lawsuit remains in state court. Former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr has appealed a three-judge panel’s decision to dismiss his case. Orr wants state courts to determine that North Carolinians have a constitutional right to “fair” elections.