In a historic victory against partisan gerrymandering, a federal court unanimously struck down North Carolina’s Republican-drawn congressional map on Tuesday for discriminating against Democratic voters in violation of the First and 14th Amendments. That makes this the first time ever that a federal court has invalidated a congressional map on such grounds, and it could lead to enormous changes in how redistricting is conducted in North Carolina and nationwide.
In an effort to ensure new maps will be in place for the 2018 elections, the three-judge panel hearing this case has given the GOP-dominated state legislature two weeks to redraw the lines, but Republicans say they plan to appeal to the Supreme Court. However, if this ruling survives appeal and leads to a less partisan map, it would strike a huge blow against one of the worst gerrymanders ever drawn, which left Democrats with just 3 of 13 seats in what is an evenly divided swing state. Indeed, as we have demonstrated, Democrats could gain several more seats with a nonpartisan map.
The ruling is so momentous because, for the past three decades, the Supreme Court has maintained that drawing maps for the benefit of one political party could violate the Constitution but has never before agreed to strike down any particular map, saying the judiciary lacks a standard for determining when gerrymandering crosses the line into a constitutional harm.
To address this concern, the North Carolina court established its own standard. To prove the GOP’s map was unconstitutional, said the judges, plaintiffs had to demonstrate three things: 1) that the map was enacted with discriminatory partisan intent; 2) that the map had a discriminatory effect that produced an asymmetric and durable partisan advantage for the map-making party; and 3) that the map couldn’t be defended as a byproduct of nonpartisan redistricting criteria like geographic compactness.
Plaintiffs relied on a broad array of evidence to satisfy these three requirements, including multiple statistical tests to measure the partisan advantage the current map gave the GOP and thousands of alternative computer-generated maps to demonstrate how this advantage couldn’t have been obtained had Republican mapmakers relied solely on neutral redistricting criteria.
However, the biggest smoking gun was the literal admission by state Rep. David Lewis, who chaired the state House redistricting committee, that the GOP really did engage in partisan gerrymandering when Lewis oversaw redrawing the map in 2016:
“I acknowledge freely that this would be a political gerrymander, which is not against the law.”
“I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats. So I drew this map to help foster what I think is better for the country.”
Why make these astonishing admissions? Because Republicans sought to insulate this map from charges that it constituted a racial gerrymander by openly saying it was a partisan gerrymander instead. As illustrated in the second map at the top of this post, Republicans had drawn a different congressional map after the 2010 census that was struck down in 2016 for discriminating against black voters.
The GOP then replaced this map with the current districts, shown at the very top. Lewis was very specific in his aims, saying, "I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats." He was thus operating from the mistaken belief that courts wouldn’t strike down this latest gerrymander if Republicans claimed it was solely intended to further partisan goals—namely, maximizing the number of GOP seats—instead.
However, courts have never said that legislators have the authority to enact nakedly partisan schemes to guarantee they always have a majority over the other party, and the judges soundly rejected the GOP’s defense of the current map. Lewis was wrong, said the court, to think that political gerrymanders are not against the law. And as for his stated motivations, well, the judges just excoriated him:
Rather than seeking to advance any democratic or constitutional interest, the state legislator responsible for drawing the 2016 Plan said he drew the map to advantage Republican candidates because he “think[s] electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats.” But that is not a choice the Constitution allows legislative mapdrawers to make. Rather, “the core principle of [our] republican government [is] that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.”
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court will likely issue a stay and hold this case until it resolves two related cases in Maryland and Wisconsin sometime by the end of their term in June. Consequently, there’s a good chance that Republicans will get away with their extreme gerrymandering for yet another election cycle in North Carolina. Furthermore, if Republican legislators indeed get another crack at drawing the map, there will likely be nothing to prevent them from attempting a more subtle gerrymander in an effort to survive judicial scrutiny.
Nevertheless, this ruling gives the Supreme Court even more impetus to finally clarify once and for all whether there’s an acceptable standard to assess when partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. And if it does, this case could have a far-reaching impact on congressional maps throughout the country, potentially changing how redistricting is conducted forever—and making election outcomes much fairer.