Second Lawsuit Challenging New GOP Voting Districts Filed
By Cash Michaels –
If you’re keeping count, now there are two federal lawsuits alleging that new redistricting voting maps ratified by the Republican-led NC General Assembly racially discriminate against voters of color.
The second one, filed December 4, 2023, alleges that new congressional map drawn starting with the 2024 election “…discriminates against minority voters in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,” and challenges the new 1st, 6th, 12th, and 14th Congressional Districts as “unconstitutional racial gerrymanders,” which are still illegal.
Partisan gerrymanders are legal under law, and no doubt, the Republican legislative majority will claim that the congressional maps, just like the legislative voting maps, are partisan, not racial, gerrymanders.
The second suit is being brought by eighteen black and Latino plaintiffs who are represented by Democratic attorney Marc Elias. In their lawsuit, plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to stop the new congressional map from being enacted.
“North Carolina gained a congressional district after the 2020 Census, almost entirely due to an increase in the state’s minority population,” the lawsuit says.. “But instead of granting minority voters the benefit of the state’s increased representation, the General Assembly majority capitalized on that gain to increase their own power and decrease minority voting power.”
“By strategically packing and cracking North Carolina’s minority voters,” the complaint continued, “… the 2023 Congressional Plan entrenches the state’s white majority and erases the gains made by voters of color in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.”
At press time, Republican legislative leaders had not made any comment in response to this lawsuit.
The first federal lawsuit alleging that GOP lawmakers “cracked and packed” Black voters in order to draw state Senate legislative voting maps, was filed by African American plaintiffs on Nov. 21. That complaint alleged that that Senate map was drawn in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“… [T]he North Carolina General Assembly adopted a Senate plan that unlawfully deprives Black voters of the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the plaintiffs in the first federal lawsuit alleged.
