Throughout the country, and particularly in North Carolina, partisan gerrymandering has been used to re-draw congressional maps in such a way as to favor the political parties currently in control. Over the past decade, North Carolina’s districting maps have been frequently challenged in the courts for unconstitutional gerrymandering. Most recently, in 2021, following the census, the state legislature enacted new congressional, state House, and state Senate maps along strict party-line votes. When challenged in court, a three-judge panel found that the congressional map was an intentional partisan redistricting crafted to favor one party more than 99.9999% of all possible district maps without a population-based reason to do so. The N.C. Supreme Court subsequently found that the map violated the voters’ fundamental rights to substantially equal voting power under the state Constitution’s Free Elections, Equal Protection, and Free Speech and Assembly clauses, which provide greater protections than their federal counterparts.
On appeal, members of the state legislature argued that the U.S. Constitution’s Election’s Clause forbids state courts from reviewing the validity of congressional redistricting plans under the state constitution. The N.C. Supreme Court rejected this argument as being “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions, and the independence of state courts” and inconsistent with nearly a century of precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its ruling in Moore v. Harper, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the N.C. Supreme Court and rejected the claim that the state legislature has unchecked power and can ignore state constitutional restrictions.
Ari Savitzky, David D. Cole, and others at the ACLU helped advance the arguments in the amicus brief in Moore v. Harper.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
The Supreme Court's opinion and the legal coalition's amicus brief in Moore v. Harper are available at www.rutherford.org.
Source: https://tinyurl.com/y3xcur69
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