October 28, 2019

Judges Throw Out North Carolina Congressional Maps Ahead of 2020 Elections

The state will have to scramble to draw new maps.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

North Carolina’s congressional maps were likely designed as “extreme partisan gerrymanders” and must be redrawn before the 2020 election, a panel of three state judges ruled Monday. 

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by Eric Holder’s group seeking to end gerrymandering. The group challenged maps the Republican state legislature had drawn in 2016, arguing that it was an illegal partisan gerrymander. 

The judges did not set a deadline for the new maps, but the state will have to rush to implement new district lines before next year’s elections.

 

While the US Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that partisan gerrymandering is not unconstitutional, state constitutions can still prohibit the practice. There was ample evidence of a politically motivated gerrymander by North Carolina Republicans, the judges found. The papers of the late Thomas Hofeller—a leading GOP redistricting expert who helped draw North Carolina’s map—created a “detailed record of both the partisan intent and the intended partisan effects of the 2016 congressional districts.” (Hofeller’s estranged daughter provided the documents after his death.)

Earlier this year, the same panel of judges threw out the maps the North Carolina General Assembly drew to elect state legislators. The panel approved new state-level maps. The judicial order for new 2020 maps for Congressional seats “respectfully urges” legislators to create “new legislative districts in a short amount of time in a transparent and bipartisan manner.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate