It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for the North Carolina Republican Party. On Monday, the State Board of Elections ordered the rejection of all county-level challenges to voter eligibility, cutting the legs out from Republican Governor Pat McCrory’s claim that he lost the gubernatorial election to Roy Cooper because of voter fraud. On Wednesday, Cooper’s margin grew above the 10,000-vote threshold for a recount, closing nearly every route for McCrory to cling to office.
Sandwiched between these developments was a ruling that could have astronomical ramifications for both North Carolina and the nation. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the federal District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina found that since the state General Assembly had been elected on the basis of racial gerrymandering, a a special election must be held for a large chunk of the state legislature next November under a new map. This ruling will likely have the effect of forcing most of the members of the state house and state senate back to the polls after only one year in office, rather than the normal term of two years.
Last summer, that same panel found that the state legislative map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Specifically, it found that 28 districts–nine in the state senate and 19 in the state house–were the product of an illegal effort to pack African-American and Latino voters into as few districts as possible. The panel ordered replacement maps be drawn by 2017. However, it left one question unanswered. Should the new map take effect in 2018, at the end of the current term? Or should it take effect in 2017?
On Tuesday, the panel decided that new elections must be held in the affected districts in 2017. Read the ruling here, courtesy of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Apparently, the court concluded that the only remedy for this gerrymander was a new election. While conceding that it would likely result in considerable expense to the state, the panel found that the gerrymandering was too egregious to be allowed to stand any longer than necessary.
“While special elections have costs, those costs pale in comparison to the injury caused by allowing citizens to continue to be represented by legislators elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander.”
In effect, according to state senator Jeff Jackson, who represents much of downtown and southwest Charlotte, the panel found that the General Assembly was “unconstitutionally composed,” and therefore nothing short of a new election was appropriate.
The panel ordered the General Assembly to submit new maps no later than March 15. The panel noted that this date will be seven months to the day from when the old map was struck down–and would be “longer than it took the 2011 legislature to redistrict the entire state.”
It is the second time in a month that a federal court has rebuked a GOP gerrymander. Last Monday, a federal court effectively tossed out Wisconsin’s state legislative map by ruling that the State assembly map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The ruling means that the state senate map will have to be redrawn as well; in Wisconsin, state senate districts are formed from three nested assembly districts.
While the order in North Carolina only formally applies to the 28 districts in question, the manner in which the map was drawn will likely mean that the maps for the state house and state senate will have to be almost completely redrawn. Jackson believes that while most districts west of Charlotte won’t be changed, nearly every lawmaker from an urban-based district will be going back to the polls next November.
Jackson provided an example of just how brutal this map was.
"Hey Jeff – what does racial gerrymandering look like?"
Easy. Guess where the African Americans live here: pic.twitter.com/rUFNQWYNf4
— Sen. Jeff Jackson (@JeffJacksonNC) November 30, 2016
The above map is the 21st senate district, which extends a number of tentacles from Hoke County that grab the black-majority neighborhoods in and around Fayetteville. As a result, it is possible to leave and enter the 21st at as many as seven points while driving through Fayetteville and surrounding Cumberland County. Due to Fayetteville’s blacks being packed into the 21st, most of Fayetteville’s whites are in a swing district that is presently held by a Republican.
There’s another factor to consider. Even as Donald Trump only narrowly carried North Carolina in the presidential race, Senator Richard Burr faced his closest race ever, and Cooper appeared to win a narrow victory, the Republicans hold a 74-46 majority in the state house and a 35-15 majority in the state senate. Moreover, according to Jackson, some 90 percent of the legislative districts are drawn in such a way that the minority party cannot possibly win.
Jackson thinks that while it is very likely that the GOP will try to draw several Democrats’ seats out from under them, there is no way they can “even minimally comply” with the ruling without drawing more competitive districts. By the same token, it will make it that much more difficult for the legislature to override Cooper’s vetoes.
Republican legislators have already vowed to appeal. However, there is virtually no chance that it will reach the Supreme Court before a Trump-appointed justice can be seated. Additionally, the Supremes struck down an equally blatant racial gerrymander in Alabama when they had a full complement of nine justices.
To put it mildly, this ruling is a game changer. It puts legislatures on notice–if you try to discriminate against minorities, you will pay for it in court.
