Opponents of New GOP-Leaning House District File Suit

By Cash Michaels –

“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Bishop William Barber.

Opponents of the new Republican-leaning First Congressional District the Republican-led NC General Assembly ratified in late October have wasted no time in challenging the new district.

One day after the NC legislature approved the new map that turns the First Congressional District from a competitive purple to definitively red, plaintiffs filed suit in federal court claiming that the new district lines not only illegally change the state’s congressional delegation from 10 Republicans and four Democrats to 11 Republicans and three Democrats, but it also violates Section Two of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, because it further breaks up the historic “Black Belt” in Northeastern North Carolina.

That Black Belt—a swath of counties with majority Black populations—has helped to elect a Black Democrat to Congress from the 1st Congressional District since 1992. Currently, moderate Democratic Congressman Don Davis, an African American who won a second term last year over a Republican opponent by just two percent, represents the district.

Davis has now been drawn into the Third District, and in published reports, he has said he hasn’t made a decision as to which district he will run in 2026, but maintains that he will continue to fight for eastern North Carolina.

The newly drawn district dilutes the Black voting strength of both the current First and Third Congressional Districts, thus denying Black voters the ability to elect their own representation, critics say.

Republicans admit that the only reason they’ve redistricted the area is to help Republican President Donald Trump maintain control of the US House, where the GOP already maintains a slim majority, but could lose it without additional seats in the 2026 midterm elections.

Ironically, the First District is already part of a federal lawsuit filed by the NC NAACP and Common Cause NC alleging racial gerrymandering. On Monday, those plaintiffs amended their original lawsuit with this new challenge, charging that Republicans are illegally using race to change the district. The GOP denies the charges, and a three-judge panel is still considering arguments per the first lawsuit.

Before the smoke cleared from the original lawsuit, Bishop William Barber of Repairers of the Breach held a rally outside the state legislature promising that a second lawsuit was forthcoming, challenging the GOP redistricting as a “racist gerrymander,” which is constitutionally illegal.

“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back… to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”

“In my home state of North Carolina this week, MAGA extremists who control the General Assembly did Trump’s bidding and passed a racist gerrymander that they believe will give them one more seat in the North Carolina delegation to Congress,” Bishop Barber wrote in his weekly Substack column online.

“What they did is illegal. It is immoral. And it is also foolish,” Barber continued. “This shameless power-grab may well serve to awaken the sleeping giant of an electorate that has not turned out higher than 50% in a modern midterm election. Our Moral Mondays coalition gathered outside the General Assembly in Raleigh, North Carolina on Thursday to announce a campaign of litigation, nonviolent resistance, and mass voter mobilization to begin November 2nd in Wilson, North Carolina—the historic First Congressional district that this latest gerrymander aims to take away from the people of North Carolina.”

Attorneys with the non-profit law firm Forward Justice confirmed that they will shortly be filing their lawsuit to challenge the Republican redistricting.