USA gerrymandering controversy (2010-)
Redistricting in North Carolina has been a controversial topic due to allegations and admissions of gerrymandering.
| Elections in North Carolina |
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Redistricting in North Carolina has been a controversial topic due to allegations and admissions of gerrymandering.
The Constitution of North Carolina states:
Article 1, Section 10:
"All elections shall be free".
Article II, Section 3:
The Senators shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators among those districts, subject to the following requirements:
(1) Each Senator shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Senator represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Senators apportioned to that district; (2) Each senate district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a senate district;
(4) When established, the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
Article II, Section 4:
The Representatives shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives among those districts, subject to the following requirements:
(1) Each Representative shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Representative represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Representatives apportioned to that district; (2) Each representative district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a representative district;
(4) When established, the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that partisan gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause and is a justiciable matter. However, the court found it difficult to apply the precedent in other cases. Only in one subsequent case, Republican Party of North Carolina v. Martin (1992), [1] did a lower court strike down a redistricting plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds. [2] : 783
Instead, the Supreme Court found it easier to rule on racial gerrymanders under existing federal law. While the Equal Protection Clause, along with Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, prohibit jurisdictions from gerrymandering electoral districts to dilute the votes of racial groups, the Supreme Court has held that in some instances, the Equal Protection Clause prevents jurisdictions from drawing district lines to favor racial groups. The Supreme Court first recognized these "affirmative racial gerrymandering" claims in Shaw v. Reno (Shaw I) (1993), [3] holding that plaintiffs "may state a claim by alleging that [redistricting] legislation, though race neutral on its face, rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification". The Supreme Court reasoned that these claims were cognizable because relying on race in redistricting "reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole". [3] : 649–650 [4] : 620 Later opinions characterized the type of unconstitutional harm created by racial gerrymandering as an "expressive harm", [2] : 862 which law professor Richard Pildes and political scientist Richard Neimi have described as a harm "that results from the idea or attitudes expressed through a governmental action." [5]
Following the Republican win of majorities in both houses of the General Assembly in the November 2010 elections, the Republican leadership set out to protect their wins by redrawing both legislative and congressional maps in their favor. This resulted in subsequent elections in which Republicans won a disproportionate number of seats, compared to the percentage of votes received by Republicans.
On February 5, 2016, a three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina judges ruled that the 1st and 12th districts' boundaries were unconstitutional and required new maps to be drawn by the legislature to be used for the 2016 election. [6] On May 22, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cooper v. Harris , agreed that the 1st and 12th congressional district boundaries were unlawful racial gerrymanders, the latest in a series of cases dating back to 1993 by different parties challenging various configurations of those districts since their first creation. [7] [8] The Republican General Assembly caucus proceeded to revise congressional maps for subsequent elections to be less racially-defined.
Yet another partisan redistricting case was heard by the Supreme Court during the 2018 term. Rucho v. Common Cause deals with Republican-favored gerrymandering in North Carolina. The District Court had ruled the redistricting was unconstitutional prior to Gill; an initial challenge brought to the Supreme Court resulted in an order for the District Court to re-evaluate their decision in light of Gill. The District Court, on rehearing, affirmed their previous decision. The state Republicans again sought for review by the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to issue its opinion by June 2018. [9]
Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek were decided on June 27, 2019, which, in the 5–4 decision, determined that judging partisan gerrymandering cases is outside of the remit of the federal court system due to the political questions involved. The majority opinion stated that extreme partisan gerrymandering is still unconstitutional, but it is up to Congress and state legislative bodies to find ways to restrict that, such as through the use of independent redistricting commissions. [10] [11]
On the same day as the Rucho decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the federal government in Department of Commerce v. New York , stating that while the bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 United States census could be upheld under the Enumeration clause, the explanation provided by the Commerce Department for the question was insufficient. An advocate of the question, Thomas Hofeller, was also the chief redistricting expert employed by the North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee in the 2010s to redraw legislative and congressional maps for North Carolina and other states. [12] One of his arguments noted that such a question "would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites." Following his death in August 2018, his estranged daughter turned over his documents to litigants in Commerce and other ongoing cases against the citizenship question in lower court, who subsequently filed motions to sanction the Department of Commerce for obfuscating Hofeller's role in how the question became framed. [13]
On September 3, 2019, the 3-judge panel (2 Democrat, 1 Republican) of the Wake County Superior Court unanimously struck down North Carolina's current legislative map as unconstitutional, without referring to federal law. Instead, the Court ruled that the map violated the state constitution's guarantees of free elections, equal protection, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The decision also cited the Hofeller files as evidence of the goal of the Republican Party to maximize the number of Republican seats in the General Assembly. The Superior Court gave the North Carolina General Assembly two weeks to draw up a new map prior to the 2020 election. The Senate President pro tempore Phil Berger announced that the Republican caucus would comply with the ruling and would not appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court. [14]
In 2020, the North Carolina State House of Representatives was tasked with redrawing district lines due to new census data. The census data was delayed due to COVID-19 complications. On November 5, the NC house voted on the maps and passed house map CBK-3, going from 13 districts to 14. On December 7, the North Carolina Supreme Court halted candidate filing due to pending lawsuits. On January 7, a panel of 3 judges ruled that maps were constitutional after a 3-day trial. [15]
However, on February 4, 2022, the Supreme Court, by a 4–3 decision struck the maps down, saying that the maps were "unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt" under multiple clauses of North Carolina State Constitution. [16] On February 23, the court upheld new maps approved by a Wake County trial court. [17]
 | This section needs to be updated. The reason given is: 2022 United States House of Representatives elections in North Carolina seems to indicate that the 2022 election cycle used the maps drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court, although the text here makes it appear that they did not. Also, Moore v. Harper was decided and rejected Independent state legislature theory and this should reflect that.(November 2023) |
On February 25, 2022, the General Assembly requested a stay on the use of the maps drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court from the United States Supreme Court. While the stay was initially denied, [18] a writ of certiorari was subsequently requested, and granted on June 30, 2022. [19] The case deals with the Independent state legislature theory, based on the Elections Clause of the United States, and has been described as a potentially landmark case in the administration of federal elections in the United States.
Redistricting in the United States is the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. For the United States House of Representatives, and state legislatures, redistricting occurs after each decennial census.
North Carolina is currently divided into 14 congressional districts, each represented by a member of the United States House of Representatives. After the 2000 census, the number of North Carolina's seats was increased from 12 to 13 due to the state's increase in population. In the 2022 elections, per the 2020 United States census, North Carolina gained one new congressional seat for a total of 14.
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in the area of redistricting and racial gerrymandering. After the 1990 census, North Carolina qualified to have a 12th district and drew it in a distinct snake-like manner in order to create a "majority-minority" Black district. From there, Ruth O. Shaw sued to challenge this proposed plan with the argument that this 12th district was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment under the clause of equal protection. In contrast, Reno, the Attorney General, argued that the district would allow for minority groups to have a voice in elections. In the decision, the court ruled in a 5–4 majority that redistricting based on race must be held to a standard of strict scrutiny under the equal protection clause and on the basis that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it was drawn solely based on race.
League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399 (2006), is a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court ruled that only District 23 of the 2003 Texas redistricting violated the Voting Rights Act. The Court refused to throw out the entire plan, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to state a sufficient claim of partisan gerrymandering.
Virginia is currently divided into 11 congressional districts, each represented by a member of the United States House of Representatives. The death of Rep. Donald McEachin on November 28, 2022, left the 4th congressional district seat empty. Following the results of a special election to fill his seat on February 21, 2023, Jennifer McClellan made history by becoming Virginia's first black congresswoman.
Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court ruling that was significant in the area of partisan redistricting and political gerrymandering. The court, in a plurality opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas, with Justice Anthony Kennedy concurring in the judgment, upheld the ruling of the District Court in favor of the appellees that the alleged political gerrymandering was not unconstitutional. Subsequent to the ruling, partisan bias in redistricting increased dramatically in the 2010 redistricting round.
Davis v. Bandemer, 478 U.S. 109 (1986), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that claims of partisan gerrymandering were justiciable, but failed to agree on a clear standard for the judicial review of the class of claims of a political nature to which such cases belong. The decision was later limited with respect to many of the elements directly involving issues of redistricting and political gerrymandering, but was somewhat broadened with respect to less significant ancillary procedural issues. Democrats had won 51.9% of the votes, but only 43/100 seats. Democrats sued on basis of one man, one vote, however, California Democrats supported the Indiana GOP's plan.
Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a mythical salamander.
The 2020 United States redistricting cycle is in progress following the completion of the 2020 United States census. In all fifty states, various bodies are re-drawing state legislative districts. States that are apportioned more than one seat in the United States House of Representatives are also drawing new districts for that legislative body.
Gill v. Whitford, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering. Other forms of gerrymandering based on racial or ethnic grounds had been deemed unconstitutional, and while the Supreme Court had identified that extreme partisan gerrymandering could also be unconstitutional, the Court had not agreed on how this could be defined, leaving the question to lower courts to decide. That issue was later resolved in Rucho v. Common Cause, in which the Court decided that partisan gerrymanders presented a nonjusticiable political question.
Redistricting has been a controversial topic in Virginia due to allegations of gerrymandering. In the 2017 Virginia General Assembly, all of the redistricting reform bills were killed.
Benisek v. Lamone, 585 U.S. ____ (2018), and Lamone v. Benisek, 588 U.S. ____ (2019), were a pair of decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States in a case dealing with the topic of partisan gerrymandering arising from the 2011 Democratic party-favored redistricting of Maryland. At the center of the cases was Maryland's 6th district which historically favored Republicans and which was redrawn in 2011 to shift the political majority to become Democratic via vote dilution. Affected voters filed suit, stating that the redistricting violated their right of representation under Article One, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution and freedom of association of the First Amendment.
Rucho v. Common Cause, No. 18-422, 588 U.S. 684 (2019) is a landmark case of the United States Supreme Court concerning partisan gerrymandering. The Court ruled that while partisan gerrymandering may be "incompatible with democratic principles", the federal courts cannot review such allegations, as they present nonjusticiable political questions outside the jurisdiction of these courts.
Thomas Brooks Hofeller was a Republican political strategist primarily known for his involvement in gerrymandering electoral district maps favorable for Republicans. David Daley of The New Yorker referred to Hofeller as "the master of the modern gerrymander." According to The New York Times, Hofeller's "mastery of redistricting strategy helped propel the Republican Party from underdog to the dominant force in state legislatures and the United States House of Representatives."
League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania et al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al.—abbreviated League of Women Voters v. Commonwealth—was a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on gerrymandering, concerning the power of the Pennsylvania General Assembly to draw maps based on partisan advantage. The Court ruled that the maps adopted by the Republican controlled legislature in 2011 was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander under the Constitution of Pennsylvania.
Redistricting in Wisconsin is the process by which boundaries are redrawn for municipal wards, Wisconsin State Assembly districts, Wisconsin State Senate districts, and Wisconsin's congressional districts. Redistricting typically occurs—as in other U.S. states—once every decade, usually in the year after the decennial United States census. According to the Wisconsin Constitution, redistricting in Wisconsin follows the regular legislative process, it must be passed by both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature and signed by the Governor of Wisconsin—unless the Legislature has sufficient votes to override a gubernatorial veto. Due to political gridlock, however, it has become common for Wisconsin redistricting to be conducted by courts. The 1982, 1992, and 2002 legislative maps were each enacted by panels of United States federal judges; the 1964 and 2022 maps were enacted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The 2010 United States redistricting cycle took place following the completion of the 2010 United States census. In all fifty states, various bodies re-drew state legislative districts. States that are apportioned more than one seat in the United States House of Representatives also drew new districts for that legislative body. The resulting new districts were first implemented for the 2011 and 2012 elections.
Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355 (1932), was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States involving a governor's power to veto a congressional redistricting proposal passed by a state's legislature. In an opinion by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Court unanimously held that the U.S. Constitution did not prohibit Minnesota's governor from vetoing that state's redistricting map.
Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1 (2023), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that rejected the independent state legislature theory (ISL), a theory that asserts state legislatures have sole authority to establish election laws for federal elections within their respective states without judicial review by state courts, without presentment to state governors, and without constraint by state constitutions. The case arose from the redistricting of North Carolina's districts by its legislature after the 2020 United States census, which the state courts found to be too artificial and partisan, and an extreme case of gerrymandering in favor of the Republican Party.
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP is a pending United States Supreme Court case regarding racial gerrymandering and partisan gerrymandering. It's the first partisan gerrymandering case taken by the Supreme Court after its landmark decision in Rucho v. Common Cause which stated that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts, and the first racial gerrymandering case after the court's landmark decision in Allen v. Milligan.
