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A Win and a Loss in Fight Against Partisan Gerrymandering

In recent years, voters have increasingly turned to state courts and state constitutions to battle partisan gerrymandering — with great success. Even as federal courts have removed themselves from any role in policing partisan gerrymandering, state courts in more than half a dozen states have struck down gerrymandered maps by relying on state law. But the fight against partisan gerrymandering in state court saw ups and downs in the last several weeks.

In North Carolina, where the state’s highest court had previously ruled that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution, the court abruptly reversed course, “abandon[ing] anti-gerrymandering precedents it had issued only last year, even though nothing other than the composition of the court had changed,” Michael Li writes.

The decision sets the stage for both the state’s congressional and legislative maps to be redrawn this summer. And with the pen now in the hands of Republican legislators, Li writes, “the outcome is almost certain to be breathtaking in its brazenness, especially given how narrowly the U.S. House is currently divided. The court-drawn map used by North Carolina voters in 2022 was balanced and competitive, electing an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in last year’s midterms. It could be transformed

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into one that reliably elects 11 Republicans and just 3 Democrats in every election for the rest of the decade no matter how well Democrats do — a skewed result wholly at odds with North Carolina’s purplish electoral politics.”

A new congressional map will also almost certainly discriminate against Black North Carolinians. “When the legislature last attempted to gerrymander in 2021, a key part of maximizing Republicans’ advantage was reducing the share of Black voters in the congressional district of G.K. Butterfield, one of two Black members of the North Carolina delegation. The effect was to transform a district where Black voters had successfully and reliably formed a coalition with like-minded white voters and make it into a Republican-leaning one.”

However, the growing success of voters in fighting gerrymandering under state constitutions continued in Alaska, where the state supreme court struck down a gerrymandered state senate map in what Yurij Rudensky calls

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a “landmark opinion

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” that “makes clear that partisan gerrymandering claims can be adjudicated by Alaska courts and establishes unequivocally that such discrimination offends equal protection under the Alaska Constitution.”



Map & Litigation Trackers



The Brennan Center has two trackers you can use to keep up with the redistricting cycle: our Redistricting Map Tracker

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contains links to all the newly passed maps, while our Redistricting Litigation Roundup

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outlines the pending legal cases over new plans.

All told, 74 cases around the country have challenged newly passed congressional or legislative maps as racially discriminatory or partisan gerrymanders (or both) as of May 25. Of these cases, 46 remain pending at the trial or appellate level.



Featured Map

Source: Campaign Legal Center

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On July 11, the Utah Supreme Court will hear a case asking it to decide whether a lawsuit challenging the state’s congressional map can proceed in state court. The pre-2021 map contained one competitive district centered in Salt Lake County, but Republican lawmakers redrew the map and took the unprecedented step of dividing Democratic-leaning voters in urban Salt Lake County among all four of the state’s congressional districts, thereby making all four districts solidly Republican. Advocacy groups challenged the map, arguing that it was a partisan gerrymander and, therefore, a violation of several provisions of the state constitution. The court will now consider whether such challenges are justiciable in Utah courts. Read more about the Brennan Center’s amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs in their fight for fair maps.

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Redistricting in the News

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed

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to hear an appeal of a lower court decision finding that South Carolina lawmakers committed a racial gerrymander when they moved Black voters from SC-01, the congressional district currently represented by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, to the predominantly Black SC-06, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn. The Court will hear the case in the term that begins in October and is expected to decide the case by the summer of 2024.



A federal judge ordered

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that Miami commissioners redraw their districts after a report from a magistrate judge found that the plaintiffs challenging the map would likely succeed in proving that commissioners unconstitutionally used voters’ race as the predominant factor when they drew district boundaries. The report found that commissioners drew maps with the goal of creating three predominantly Latino districts, one predominantly Black district, and a white plurality district. The city must have new districts in time for November’s municipal elections.



On May 11, the Washington Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Washington Voting Rights Act

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. Two years ago, a group of Latino voters and organizations used the new act to challenge Franklin County’s at-large election system, arguing that the system diluted the votes of Latinos living in the Yakima Valley. In turn, a Franklin County resident challenged the constitutionality of the Washington Voting Rights Act itself. Read more about this case and the Brennan Center’s amicus brief supporting the Washington Voting Rights Act.



Despite a contentious

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and bitter

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redistricting process, Boston city councilors are hoping

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that their second attempt at a city council map will stick after a district court judge struck down

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their first proposal as likely racially gerrymandered. The court’s ruling left councilors little time to pass a new map, but after intense negotiations, 10 councilors voted to advance a proposal for the mayor’s approval

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. The councilor who led the latest round of redistricting negotiations has indicated plans to introduce legislation that would establish an independent redistricting commission.



In Florida, the Jacksonville City Council voted

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15–3 to agree to a settlement with civil rights groups in a lengthy legal battle over the city council and school board maps. A judge repeatedly ruled against the city council in court, finding the maps racially gerrymandered. As part of the settlement, the city will use districts proposed by one of the plaintiffs, the Jacksonville NAACP.



A new report by the Census Bureau revealed

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that it likely undercounted a large share of noncitizens in its 2020 count. The Trump administration engaged in a lengthy legal battle over adding a citizenship question to the census form, which many advocates argue discouraged undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens from responding. After assessing administrative records, the bureau found that almost 20 percent of noncitizen addresses could not be matched to those recorded in the 2020 census.



Staff at the Census Bureau presented

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a working paper detailing how they plan on testing questions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in the American Community Survey. Researchers will use this testing phase to evaluate question wording and the accuracy of proxy reporting. Testing will begin sometime this year before larger field tests are conducted in 2024.



You can find earlier editions of our Redistricting Roundup here

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.









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