High court says North Carolina doesn’t have to immediately redraw congressional maps

WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court said late Thursday that North Carolina does not immediately have to redraw its congressional district maps, meaning that the 2018 elections likely will be held in districts that a lower court found unconstitutional.

The court granted a request from North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders to put the lower court’s ruling on hold. The decision was not unexpected, because the Supreme Court generally is reluctant to require the drawing of new districts before it has had a chance to review a lower court’s ruling that such an action is warranted, especially in an election year.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would not have granted the request.

The practical effect is that this year’s elections almost surely will be conducted under the 2016 boundaries, in which Republicans hold 10 of the 13 congressional seats. The GOP domination’s of the congressional delegation belies North Carolina’s recent history as a battleground state. It has a Democratic governor and attorney general, who have declined to defend the maps.

A three-judge panel last week invalidated the map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2016, calling it improper partisan gerrymandering. The decision was the first striking down a congressional map on the grounds that it was rigged in favor of a political party.

The court panel ordered lawmakers to redraw the boundaries by Jan. 29.

But the legislative leaders argued that the uniqueness of the court order was the reason the Supreme Court should put it on hold.

The Supreme Court has never thrown out a state’s electoral district map because of partisan gerrymandering. It has two cases on its docket that will decide just that question — but they are unlikely to be resolved in time to affect any plan to redraw the North Carolina districts.

The court already has heard a case from Wisconsin and has accepted one from Maryland. In the Wisconsin case, the justices said new district maps did not have to be drawn until the case was decided. In Maryland, challengers lost in a lower court and have appealed, so the single district boundary in dispute has remained in place.

The North Carolina legislative leaders said their state should receive the same consideration as Wisconsin.

“State legislatures should not be forced to draw new maps based on novel theories of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering unless and until this court concludes that such claims are actually justiciable and identifies a standard for adjudicating them,” the lawmakers’ brief said.