The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a bid from state legislators to review a case that struck down the 2011 North Carolina legislative districts and sent the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina for determination on whether special elections could be held for legislative seats in 2017.
Gov. Roy Cooper released a statement praising the Supreme Court’s decision not to review the lower court’s ruling.
“Whether the election is November 2018 or earlier, redrawing the districts is good for our democracy by leveling the playing field for free and fair elections,” Cooper said in the statement. “The people should be able to choose their representatives in competitive districts instead of the representatives being able to choose the people in lopsided, partisan districts.”
This is the third Supreme Court decision to come in recent weeks on lawsuits that challenged maps drawn following the 2010 Census, which left 28 state House and Senate districts racially gerrymandered, along with two federal congressional districts.
The decision comes five days after the justices met to determine whether to take up the case, which was filed in 2015 by 31 North Carolina residents.
The North Carolina Republican Party still contends that the General Assembly drew fair legislative districts in 2011, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, according to North Carolina GOP Chairman Robin Hayes.
“Approximately 4.5 million citizens cast votes for the General Assembly in 2016,” Hayes said. “The special election would have thrown those votes into the garbage can and replaced them with maybe 10 percent of that total. We are glad the Supreme Court obliterated this partisan ruling, which would have allowed Democrats to deceitfully seize elections they did not win at the ballot box.”
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice represented the redistricting challengers before the Supreme Court. The SCSJ plans to do whatever it takes to continue the original special elections in the districts affected by racial gerrymandering later this year, according to Anita Earls, the organization’s executive director.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has finally and emphatically confirmed what we’ve know for years — that many of North Carolina’s state legislative districts are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders,” Earls said in a statement Monday. “The order reaffirms that our clients, and the voters of this state, are entitled to have fair legislative districts that do not discriminate against voters based on their race.”
