North Carolina’s Supreme Court Reverses Vote in Gerrymandering Case
Barely a year after Democratic justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court said new maps of the state’s legislative and congressional districts were partisan gerrymanders that violated the State Constitution, a newly elected Republican majority on the court reversed course on Friday and said the court had no authority to overturn those maps.
The practical effect is to enable the Republican-controlled State Legislature to scrap the court-ordered State Senate and congressional district boundaries that were used in elections last November, and draw new maps skewed in their favor for elections in 2024.
Overturning such a recent ruling by the court was a highly unusual move, particularly on a pivotal constitutional issue in which none of the facts had changed. In an opinion divided 5 to 2 along party lines, the new Republican majority of justices said the court had no authority to strike down partisan maps that the state General Assembly had drawn.
“Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text,” Chief Justice Brian Newby wrote for the majority. “Were this Court to create such a limitation, there is no judicially discoverable or manageable standard for adjudicating such claims.”
Source: The New York Times
