Trial over NC legislative districts begins in Greensboro

As North Carolina awaits word from a three-judge federal panel about the constitutionality of congressional maps drawn in February by the N.C. General Assembly, lawyers who worked on that case are set to go to trial on Monday with similar arguments about the state’s legislative districts.

In a lawsuit filed 11 months ago in federal court, Sandra Covington, a Fayetteville resident, and 26 others sued the state and key legislators, challenging nine state Senate districts and 19 state House districts. The suit contends the districts are gerrymanders designed to weaken the influence of black voters.

The arguments are similar to those used in the case filed by Christine Bowser and David Harris in 2013 – contentions that persuaded a three-judge panel to rule in February that two of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

In the Bowser case, the judges ordered the congressional maps to be redrawn. The legislature adopted new maps in February, saying only partisan advantage, not race, had played a role in the new districts. The three-judge panel has not ruled on whether those maps remedied the gerrymander problems, but a decision could be made soon.

Lawyers who represented Bowser and Harris filed a document associated with the lawsuit late last week seeking $1.104 million in attorneys’ fees for prevailing in their case.

North Carolina’s legislative and congressional maps were drawn in 2011 after the 2010 Census to reflect population shifts. Though the courts have allowed for partisan advantage in drawing the maps, race cannot play a predominant role in the design.

Black voters in North Carolina tend to vote for Democrats. The challengers of the maps contend that black voters were packed into districts to weaken their influence.

Since the 2011 maps were adopted, Republicans have expanded their majority in the state house.

The trial that opens Monday in a Greensboro courthouse will put heavy reliance on public statements made by state Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenberg County Republican, and state Rep. David Lewis, a Republican from Harnett County, after the new lines were drawn.

The two shepherded the map-making process through the General Assembly and gave instructions to Thomas Hofeller, the former redistricting director of the Republican National Committee, who developed North Carolina’s 2011 maps.

The advocates of the maps point out that a three-judge panel and the N.C. Supreme Court have upheld the maps, though an appeal of the state supreme court decision is pending.

The map challengers pursued a two-path approach, filing lawsuits in both state and federal court.

When Covington and others filed the case last May, the U.S. Supreme Court had just issued a ruling on an Alabama redistricting case in which the justices said Alabama lawmakers had relied too much on race in drawing their maps.

“These claims are a carbon copy of the baseless allegations already rejected by the Obama Justice Department, a bipartisan three-judge Superior Court, and the North Carolina Supreme Court,” Lewis and Rucho said in a joint statement after the Covington lawsuit was filed. “We are confident these copycat claims will meet the same fate as the originals and the fair and legal 2011 legislative districts will once again be upheld.”

The North Carolina legislators have said they considered race as part of Voting Rights Act requirements, but the three-judge federal panel found otherwise in its February ruling on the congressional districts.

The trial in Greensboro is expected to last a week, and the presiding judges will be different than the other redistricting case.

A ruling for the challengers could mean that lawmakers are called upon again to redraw legislative maps in an election year that already has brought much confusion to voters.

One of the first arguments the three-judge panel in Greensboro will consider is whether to allow six current and former Democratic legislators to testify to their personal knowledge of the geography, demographics and voting patterns of their districts.

Attorneys for the state are trying to block that testimony, saying those details can be obtained from public records.

“As members of the North Carolina Democratic Party, which lost majority control of the General Assembly in 2010 for the first time in 100 years, their ‘zeal to defeat’ a plan which benefits Republican legislators is not shocking,” attorneys for Rucho, Lewis and the state argued. “But their self-serving motives render any testimony they may provide insufficient to sustain legal conclusions about the constitutionality of the redistricting plan.”

The challengers shot back that if the Democratic lawmakers are viewed in such a way, the courts should look similarly at Rucho and Lewis, who are on the defendants’ witness list.

The defendants’ “position must be that legislators who seek to uphold the constitutionality of a redistricting plan they supported are inherently less interested in the outcome of the litigation and thus more credible....”

Such a notion, the challengers said, “is offensive to principles of equal justice under the law. The plaintiffs are entitled to present the testimony of witnesses who have relevant evidence.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2016 at 7:56 PM with the headline "Trial over NC legislative districts begins in Greensboro."