Voting rights groups challenging the newly drawn 1st Congressional District in North Carolina presented an argument courts have never before considered — that the mid-decade, voluntary redistricting retaliated against voters.
A federal three-judge panel heard arguments in a Winston-Salem courtroom Wednesday about the new congressional districts in eastern and northeastern North Carolina that Republicans adopted in October. Opponents want the judges to block the new districts from being used next year.
Republicans want to make sure that the 1st Congressional District, which has been represented by a Black Democrat for more than three decades, will elect a Republican next year.
Republican President Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat, both narrowly won the 1st District last year. It was considered the state’s only competitive congressional district before it was redrawn.
Hilary Harris Klein, a lawyer representing the North Carolina NAACP, Common Cause and individual voters, argued that the redistricting deliberately targeted the people in that district for how they voted in 2024, and for bringing a lawsuit against congressional and legislative districts used last year.
“This is an unprecedented escalation,” she said. “This has created a new kind of harm.”
North Carolina is part of a national wave of redistricting instigated by Trump. He wants Republican states to create more GOP congressional districts in time for the midterms to prevent Democrats from taking the majority in the U.S. House.
States redistrict after each census, and more often if courts require it. This is the first time North Carolina has redistricted at a president’s explicit request.
The new North Carolina congressional map was designed to elect 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The current congressional delegation has 10 Republicans and four Democrats.
Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell), who was in charge of drawing the districts, was the hearing’s only witness. No racial data was used to create the plan, he said.
“We undertook the process to improve the partisan advantage for Republicans,” Hise said.
Klein argued that if allowed, Republicans would be able to redistrict after every election if they don’t like the results.
“It can create an infinity loop that will forever frustrate judicial review,” she said.
Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, addresses the legislative redistricting committee in 2023. (Photo: NCGA videostream)The judges, all Republican appointees, had pointed questions for Klein and Lalitha Madduri, who represents a separate group of voters.
State and federal courts have declared that they will not consider cases claiming partisan gerrymandering. Klein was asked repeatedly how the harm to voters she described differs from any harms from partisan gerrymandering the courts allow.
Klein said this year’s redistricting is different because legislators had no legitimate reason to do it. “The only reason they did it was to hurt our clients” and other voters, she said.
Meantime, Madduri argued that the census data used to draw the districts is old, so the districts are out of proportion. The main reason states redraw district boundaries every 10 years after the census is to make the district populations as close to equal as possible.
However, Madduri could not say how far out of balance the districts have become.
Judge Thomas Schroeder suggested that the novelty of the retaliation argument would work against opponents’ efforts to have the map blocked until the case can be tried. They have to show a likelihood of success on the merits to win a preliminary injunction.
“This is a novel proposition where there is no current law,” he said.
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