Old NC map battle helped kill latest congressional complaint

Legal challenges to North Carolina’s new congressional map faltered in federal court when they faced a major obstacle: the state’s recent redistricting history.

The US Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in the North Carolina case Rucho v. Common Cause played a major role in a trial court’s Nov. 26 decision about the new map. The court rejected a proposed injunction. The map can move forward for 2026 elections.

Spurred by a request from President Donald Trump, the Republican-led General Assembly redrew the congressional map in October with Senate Bill 249. The stated goal was simple: Help the GOP add another US House seat.

Plaintiffs in two federal lawsuits objected. They claimed that drawing a new map with 2020 census data would lead to “malapportionment,” with some districts having too many or too few voters. Critics also claimed violations of Democrats’ and black voters’ constitutional rights.

Three federal judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, rejected each complaint. They cited a 2006 Texas case to address malapportionment. Much of the rest of the ruling relied on Rucho.

The two precedents “present formidable obstacles” to map critics, the judges wrote. “Plaintiffs have not shown that their First Amendment claims and Fourteenth Amendment partisanship claim are likely to be justiciable, much less successful.”

Rucho addressed claims tied to the First and 14th Amendments, along with the Elections Clause, and Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution. “Despite the various stylings of the claims, the Court’s holding was succinct: the plaintiffs’ claims were essentially complaints about partisan gerrymandering, and ‘partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts,’” the judges wrote.

The Rucho case “directly implicates” the current dispute.

“In essence, Plaintiffs take issue with the General Assembly enacting S.B. 249 to favor Republicans, which Plaintiffs claim retaliated and discriminated against them as Democrats,” the judges explained. “As the Supreme Court has held, such claims ‘present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.’”

Map critics “cannot avoid Rucho by styling their claims as First and Fourteenth Amendment violations,” the judges wrote. When plaintiffs complain that Republican lawmakers used partisan data to “dilute” Democrats’ votes, “that claim is likely foreclosed by Rucho.”

“Indeed, the Supreme Court in Rucho reversed a lower court’s ruling that a state legislature had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by drawing districts that ‘intentionally dilut[ed] the voting strength of Democrats.’ The Supreme Court found that the Fourteenth Amendment provided no manageable standards to judge when consideration of partisanship went too far,” the court order added.

New First Amendment complaints fare no better.

“The Supreme Court considered First Amendment claims which, like Plaintiffs’ claims here, alleged an ‘intent to burden individuals based on their voting history or party affiliation,’ a ‘burden on political speech or associational rights,’ and ‘retaliat[ion] against supporters of Democratic candidates on the basis of their political beliefs,’” the three judges wrote. “Despite the First Amendment framing, the Court found these claims were nonjusticiable.”

Election maps create “no restrictions on speech, association, or any other First Amendment activities,” the Supreme Court determined in Rucho. “Plaintiffs offer no reason that the same is not true in this case. Further, the Court rejected the plaintiffs’ theory ‘that partisanship in districting should be regarded as simple discrimination against supporters of the opposing party on the basis of political viewpoint.’”

The Rucho ruling dealt with partisan gerrymandering. It did not focus on race. Yet the decision still helped judges address map critics’ latest race-based arguments.

“S.B. 249 traces its lineage to the relentless efforts of the North Carolina General Assembly to win the legal battle over the permissibility of partisan considerations in redistricting,” the panel wrote. “This history suggests that the General Assembly, having vigorously contended for the right to consider partisan data in redistricting, intended to exercise that right.”

Plaintiffs argued that Republican lawmakers intentionally targeted black voters for partisan gains.

“We find their logic lacking,” the judges responded. The plaintiffs “provided no reason, and we see none, why a mapmaker who wanted to produce safely Republican districts would use ‘racial data — with the associated legal risks — as a proxy for partisan data when he had access to refined, … precinct-level political data’ from which to draw districts with partisan precision.”

In other words, it doesn’t make sense that lawmakers would choose to squander their 2019 Supreme Court victory.

Legal fights over North Carolina’s election maps are far from over. But the Rucho case clearly limits the routes map critics can take moving forward.

Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.