WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina congressional and legislative districts drawn by Republicans that helped them retain majorities in Raleigh and Washington are in court, as federal lawsuits accuse mapmakers of illegally eroding Black voting power in the process.
A three-judge panel convened Monday in Winston-Salem for a trial over allegations that GOP legislative leaders violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution when they enacted new electoral maps in the ninth-largest state in October 2023. Republican leaders counter that lawfully partisan — and not racial — considerations helped inform their decision-making.
The lines were used in the 2024 elections, after which Republicans kept General Assembly majorities and flipped three U.S. House seats held by Democratic incumbents who didn’t seek reelection because they decided the recast district made winning impossible. Those seat flips, which turned a 7-7 delegation into one with a 10-4 Republican advantage, helped the GOP keep narrow control of the House, which has helped advance President Donald Trump's agenda.
Favorable rulings for the plaintiffs could force Republicans to redraw maps for the 2026 elections, making it harder to retain their partisan advantage. Otherwise, the districts could be used through the 2030 elections.
The trial involves two lawsuits filed in late 2023.
In one lawsuit, the North Carolina NAACP, Common Cause and several Black residents originally sued over redrawn state House and Senate maps and U.S. House districts. The other lawsuit filed by nearly 20 Black and Latino voters focused on the new congressional districts, four of which they argue are illegal racial gerrymanders.
Pretrial rulings this spring and amended litigation dismissed challenges to the state House map and narrowed state Senate arguments to a handful of districts.
Still, both lawsuits claim that lines are so skewed for GOP candidates that many Black voters cannot elect their preferred candidates, violating the Voting Rights Act. They allege the mapmakers at times submerged or spread out Black voting blocs, which historically have favored Democrats, into surrounding districts with white majorities — benefiting Republicans.
They point to the Piedmont Triad region where the cities of Greensboro, High Point and Winston-Salem are located. They said Republicans split the region’s concentrated Black voting population within multiple U.S. House districts. Then-Rep. Kathy Manning, a Greensboro Democrat, decided not to run again because her district shifted to the right.
“This was an effort to spread those voters across districts,” said Jonathan Rodden, a Stanford University redistricting expert who testified Monday for some plaintiffs about congressional boundaries. Rodden said the results were less-compact districts that make it harder for voters within them to act collectively toward a common policy goal.
The plaintiffs also allege GOP lawmakers unlawfully packed Black voting-age residents into a Charlotte-area congressional district.
The trial's lawyers agreed not to give opening statements Monday. But in a pretrial brief, lawyers for Republican leaders said the lawmakers used mapmaking rules that prohibited using data identifying the race of voters, in keeping with rulings on previous North Carolina redistricting maps in which judges chided them for emphasizing race.
Instead, Republicans were able to lawfully use partisan data — like statewide election results — in drawing the new maps, the lawyers said. They cite a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision and an April 2023 state Supreme Court decision that neutered legal claims of illegal partisan gerrymandering.
“The General Assembly has striven to end racial politics through race-blind redistricting,” wrote Katherine McKnight and Phil Strach, two lawyers for the GOP legislators, adding that a Voting Rights Act violation “would only return the State to the race-based redistricting it has sought to end.”
Rodden testified Monday the “racial sorting” of voters within challenged congressional districts that he examined can’t be attributed fully to politics alone. On cross-examination, Rodden acknowledged that he didn't know all of the partisan factors that GOP lawmakers considered in 2023.
The three judges were all nominated to the bench by Republican presidents: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Allison Rushing (Donald Trump) and District Judges Thomas Schroeder (George W. Bush) and Richard Myers (Trump).
The panel has set aside several days for a trial that won't end until July 9. Other likely witnesses include individual plaintiffs, state legislators, historians and more mapping experts. No immediate decision is expected — the legal sides have until early August to file additional briefs.
The court's ruling can be appealed. With candidate filing for the 2026 election starting Dec. 1, any required remapping would have to be completed by late fall to avoid election disruptions.
North Carolina has a long history of redistricting litigation in federal courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in landmark cases in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s involving racial bias and the extent to which racial considerations could be used in forming districts that favored the election of Black candidates. The court's 2019 decision on partisan gerrymandering stemmed from a North Carolina case.
The current maps were drawn after the state Supreme Court, with a Republican seat majority, essentially struck down rulings the court made in 2022 when it had a Democratic majority.
Two other lawsuits challenging the 2023 district boundaries are pending.
Statewide races in North Carolina are close, and Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for most of the past 30 years. But Republicans have controlled the General Assembly — and thus redistricting — since 2011. Redistricting maps can’t be blocked by a governor’s veto.
FILE - Reggie Weaver, at podium, speaks outside the Legislative Building in Raleigh, N.C, on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022, about a recent partisan gerrymandering ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court.(AP Photo/Gary D. Robertson, File)
FILE - The North Carolina Senate reviews copies of a map proposal for the state's congressional districts starting in 2024 during a committee hearing at the Legislative Office Building, Oct. 19, 2023, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum, File)
