The NC gerrymandering trial is done. Here’s how it ended, and when to expect a ruling.
It would be a huge blow to democracy in North Carolina to either let the state’s political districts stand, or to overturn them, lawyers on opposing sides argued Thursday in closing arguments for the state’s high-profile gerrymandering trial.
The four-day trial was over North Carolina’s new political maps, drawn by the Republican-led legislature in 2021 and slated to be used in every election through 2030 — unless they’re thrown out in court first. The judges didn’t immediately issue a ruling Thursday but said they would rule soon, by Tuesday at the latest.
Lawyers for the legislature didn’t challenge the findings that their maps are skewed in favor of Republicans, with an equal split in the statewide vote likely giving Republicans a 10-4 advantage in the congressional map. They did, however, criticize some of the other side’s analysis as being cherry-picked when it accused lawmakers of drawing maps that were extreme outliers.
Numerous experts for the liberal challengers testified that Republicans will keep winning strong majorities in the state legislature and Congress, under the new maps, even if Democrats win a significant majority of the statewide vote.
“The plans were drawn to entrench Republican dominance,” said Elizabeth Theodore, an attorney for some of the liberal challengers in the case. “... They were carefully crafted to ensure Republican majorities, or even supermajorities, regardless of how people actually vote.”
They also pointed to their cross-examination of a top Republican redistricting official, who admitted his work had relied at least in part on outside maps that had been kept secret until now, and which were destroyed before the trial.
The GOP legislators who drew the maps, however, argued that maps skewed in favor of their party aren’t outliers. It makes sense, they said, since Democratic voters tend to live in a few cities, while Republican voters are spread out in rural areas, giving them a geographic advantage in state politics.
Three superior court court judges, two Republicans and a Democrat, oversaw the trial. Regardless of how they rule, however, the case could very well end up at the N.C. Supreme Court where Democrats currently hold a 4-3 majority.
Fighting over maps and math
Phil Strach, a lead attorney for the legislature, said Thursday that Democrats simply brought the lawsuit because they can’t win elections without the courts stepping in to help them. One of the plaintiffs in the case proposed a potential set of maps to replace the legislature’s, and Strach called the proposal a “ruthless” gerrymander in favor of Democrats.
“Your honors, if there’s any threat to democracy here, it’s plaintiffs’ theories,” he said.
The plaintiffs had numerous expert witnesses who testified that the legislature’s maps are extreme outliers in various ways of measuring partisan gerrymandering, including one who created billions of possible maps of North Carolina’s political districts. He testified that the map for the congressional delegation that the legislature passed into law — which would give Republicans a 10-4 advantage if the statewide vote is split 50-50 — was skewed more to the right than 99.99% of his billions of comparisons.
Strach dismissed that and other similar testimony as irrelevant.
“Politics is not a math problem,” he said.
Elections as ‘mere formalities’?
In the end, however, the statistical arguments might not be the most important factor for the judges. The key legal fight could instead come down to whether anything in the N.C. Constitution applies to redistricting.
In other words: Is there even any legal basis for a court to rule that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional?
The legislature says no.
“The plaintiffs have failed to answer the key question that vexes all courts struggling with partisan gerrymandering claims: What is the line between permissible and impermissible partisan consideration when drawing the maps?” Strach said. “The fact is, that is an unanswerable question.”
But the challengers argue that state courts can — and must — step in when the legislature passes a map that, as attorney Zach Scauf described it, “thwarts the will of the people.”
The maps are drawn to favor Republicans so strongly that the GOP would remain in control even if Democrats win the statewide vote by a relatively large margin of 6 percentage points, Schauf said.
“They are extreme partisan gerrymanders that will render most elections in North Carolina mere formalities,” he said.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at link.chtbl.com/underthedomenc or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 11:59 AM.
