A North Carolina trial court struck down the state’s legislative maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders under the state constitution in a major win for North Carolina voters. In a detailed 357-page opinion, the unanimous three-judge court threw out the maps for the state senate and house and gave North Carolina’s General Assembly two weeks to draw new lines. The court also appointed a referee to help it evaluate and, if needed, redraw any maps passed by the assembly. Republicans have said they will not appeal the ruling.

The court’s ruling is the second time this decade that state courts have declared North Carolina’s legislative maps unconstitutional. The districts were redrawn once in 2017 to remedy racial gerrymandering.

On September 17, the legislature approved redrawn house and senate maps. In the coming weeks, the trial court will assess whether the remedial maps pass muster. But with new maps on the horizon, North Carolinians may have the opportunity to vote using fairly drawn districts for the first time this decade.

The North Carolina ruling is the third this decade finding maps to be partisan gerrymanders under state law. A 2016 Florida ruling struck down that state’s congressional and state senate maps as a violation of fair redistricting amendments passed by voters in 2010. And in 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered that state’s congressional map to be redrawn after finding that the map violated the state’s fair and equal elections clause.

Republicans in Michigan have filed two cases in a federal district court challenging the state’s newly created independent citizen redistricting commission. The cases—Daunt v. Benson and Michigan Republican Party v. Benson—claim that the commission unlawfully bars lobbyists, legislative staffers and close relatives of lawmakers from serving on the commission and discriminates in various ways against Republicans on the basis of their partisan affiliation and past political activity. The plaintiffs have asked the court to declare the commission unconstitutional and, in the meantime, block commission proceedings.

These newly filed cases attack an independent commission that Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved in 2018 with 61 percent of the vote—including majorities in most Republican counties. The commission is part of a broader, recent wave of redistricting reform, that saw a record five states pass reforms last November.

Source: Common Cause v. Lewis, Judgment, http://go.brennancenter.org/e/557782/l-work-2019-09-03-Judgment-pdf/3qd8z6/396296801?h=HcuAwB019hDFHk1ifcGKDB4CNUKJL8XiI7rBEIKmEJo

This map shows the “Wilmington Notch” which the trial court in Common Cause v. Lewis ruled was an “extreme and intentional partisan gerrymander.” In the Wilmington Notch gerrymander, the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature divided the city of Wilmington, separating out a handful of heavily Democratic voting precincts from the rest of the city (which the legislature put in Senate District 9), and put the precincts instead in heavily Republican Senate District 8. The result of this “cracking” of Wilmington was to waste the votes of Democratic voters in the Wilmington precincts

• On August 29, Gov. Tom Wolf’s Pennsylvania Redistricting Reform Commission published its final report, recommending that the state create an 11-member citizen advisory commission to draw congressional and state legislative lines. The Redistricting Reform Commission also recommended a set of map-drawing criteria and increased public participation in the redistricting process.
• After a bipartisan bill to create an advisory redistricting commission was overwhelmingly approved by the New Hampshire legislature, Governor Chris Sununu vetoed the proposal. On September 18, the state house fell short of the votes necessary to override the veto.
• The Raleigh News & Observer offers in-depth profiles of voters around the state of North Carolina whose right to representation in the General Assembly was at stake in the recently decided partisan gerrymandering case, Common Cause v. Lewis.
• Facing South reports on the lack of state funding for 2020 Census complete count initiatives in the South, a region already prone to significant undercounts and in particular need of the federal funds allocated using census numbers.
• On September 9, a federal judge allowed state and local governments from across the country - including 15 states - to intervene in Alabama v. U.S. Department of Commerce, where they will defend against Alabama’s attempt to exclude undocumented people from the final census count.