"Jeff - what just happened with the courts and gerrymandering in NC?"
Here's what happened:
Late last night, a federal district court struck down the 1st and 12th NC congressional districts as unlawfully gerrymandered and ordered them immediately redrawn. In short, the court said it was blatantly obvious that the folks who drew those districts used race as the dominant factor, which you can't do.
Unless a higher federal court quickly says otherwise, this means the General Assembly will be called back into an emergency session next week to pass a bill that redraws those districts.
But, of course, you can't simply redraw two districts without impacting all the surrounding districts, so this could impact the whole map.
While this ruling only deals with North Carolina's congressional seats - and not any General Assembly seats - there are other cases pending making the same argument about racially gerrymandered state house and state senate seats.
Republicans will appeal. The federal appellate court may choose to pause the lower court's order to redraw the districts while it hears the appeal, but this would bring any redraw very close to the March 15th primary.
As if we needed it, this is more evidence that North Carolina desperately needs independent redistricting. Politicians in both parties have proven themselves completely incapable of responsibly (and legally) wielding the power to draw district boundaries, which is ultimately the power to decide elections. The first bill I ever filed was to end gerrymandering, and lots of Republicans support the effort, to their credit. We can and must fix this broken piece of our democracy.
The source is his Facebook page, and he has it set to "Public," so I think it is OK to reproduce in full here.
-app
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