CN
17 Jun 2025, 00:32 GMT+10
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (CN) - A panel of judges heard testimony for a trial that began Monday in North Carolina over election maps drawn by North Carolina Republican lawmakers in 2023 that challengers say violated the Voting Rights Act in an effort to reduce Black voting power and Democratic majorities.
Voting rights advocates say the contested maps broke up Black-opportunity districts and allowed Republicans to hold on to their majority in the state House and Senate and flip three seats in the U.S. House in the 2024 elections, after the Democrats filling the seats elected not to seek reelection after the redistricting.
The case includes dual two consolidated legal challenges, one which initially targeted redrawn U.S. House districts and another that challenged Congressional, state Senate and state House election maps.
The plaintiffs, a group of Black and Latino voters, voting rights groups and voting activists, claim that racial discrimination was a factor in the redistricting process as GOP lawmakers drew maps that will be in use until 2030. A rapid judgment in the case could result in the maps being redrawn, if not, they may continue to be in effect for the 2026 elections.
Counsel for the plaintiffs presented witnesses Monday after the parties waived their opportunity to present opening arguments in the case.
Jonathan Rodden, the plaintiffs' expert witness, said that while he could not speak on the intent of the mapdrawers, that the new U.S. House map cracks Black voters into majority-white districts in the Piedmont Triad, while Black voters are packed into one district in Charlotte.
Voters in the three major Piedmont cities - Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point - have been divided into four Congressional districts despite the principle of compactness, which mapdrafters factor in in an attempt to keep existing counties together.
But in Charlotte, Black voters are heavily shifted into a district that has a higher Black population than the majority of computer-drawn districts would contain. This area "packed" Black voters in, preventing a high Black population in two Congressional districts, Rodden said.
Black voters in the triad are "fractionalized" and moved into districts far from the urban center, he said. Doing so wouldn't have been necessary for Republicans lawmakers to achieve their desired number of seats, as legislators could have accomplished that with districts that have a higher Black voting population, Rodden added.
Traditional redistricting criteria would have also resulted in a broader spread of Black voters across the population as compared to the current Senate map, Rodden said, which splits the triad into three different Senate voting districts, compared to one split on the former map.
The new districts "truncates" the Black voting population, he said, by creating a district with a large swatch of rural population in a district with an urban, primarily Black neighborhood.
Maxwell Palmer, a political science professor for Boston University also appeared for the plaintiffs, and provided sweeping analysis of the new Congressional map, based on analysis of voting data from counties that make up the challenged districts, not the voters within the boundaries of the differing election maps. The maps do not follow county lines.
"I see evidence of racial polarization in every race that I look at. Black and white voters support different candidates," he said Monday afternoon.
Palmer described Black voters as "highly cohesive," while white voters are cohesive in opposing the Black preferred candidate.
"The way voters develop partisan attachments and the way they feel about voting is not something that can be easily separated out," he said, pointing to a relationship between race and political partisanship.
The new plans disproportionately affect Black voters and benefit white voters, he testified, in comparison to the court-mandated 2022 election map, the predecessor to the current election map enacted in 2023.
Legislative defendants Speaker of the House Destin Hall and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger have contested the claims, saying that the redistricting process was politically partisan, but that the map-drawing process did not factor in racial data.
Lawmakers are allowed to use "constitutional political gerrymandering," they said in their trial brief, "even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the state were conscious of that fact."
They emphasized that evidence will not show that race was a predominant factor, nor that the state General Assembly had the intention of diluting the minority vote in the challenged Senate districts. Instead, they said, the plaintiffs must "disentangle race from politics" and political goals.
The plaintiffs "stand only on the contention that the 2023 plan harms Democratic candidates (who are typically preferred by Black voters) as compared to Republican candidates (who are typically preferred by White voters)," they said. "But this fails to differentiate race from politics."
The panel included Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Allison Rushing, a Donald Trump appointee, and U.S. District Court Judges Thomas Schroeder and Richard Myers, George W. Bush and Trump appointees, respectively, none of whom had questions for witnesses Monday.
The trial is scheduled to conclude arguments July 9, but as candidate filing for the 2026 election begins on Dec. 1, the state board of elections has asked that any decision changing elections maps be received by the 1st, to prevent a delay in the election process.
Source: Courthouse News Service
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