Judges rule N. Carolina districts as partisan

RALEIGH, N.C. — A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina’s election districts for U.S. Congress on Tuesday as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders and gave lawmakers until Jan. 29 to bring them new maps to correct the problem.

The ruling comes in cases filed by the League of Women Voters and Common Cause in North Carolina stemming from maps adopted in 2016 during a special legislative session.

The judges — James A. Wynn, a Barack Obama appointee to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and federal District Judges W. Earl Britt, a Jimmy Carter appointee, and William L. Osteen Jr., a George W. Bush appointee — were unanimous that North Carolina lawmakers under Republican leadership violated the Constitution’s equal-protection clause when they drew maps explicitly to favor their party.

“On its most fundamental level, partisan gerrymandering violates ‘the core principle of republican government ... that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around,’” the majority opinion states.

Wynn and Britt also found that the 2016 redistricting plan designed to give North Carolina Republicans wins in 10 of the 13 districts also violated the free speech of the challengers by trying to weaken the voices of Democrats with whom they did not agree. Osteen dissented from his colleagues on that point, but agreed overall that the maps were unconstitutional.

During the legislative session in which the maps were drawn, Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican who has shepherded the state’s recent redistricting efforts, announced that the maps were drawn to give Republicans a large majority.