UPDATE 1-Legal battle over U.S. gerrymandering shifts to North Carolina as trial begins

North Carolina's state legislative districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to entrench Republicans in power and must be thrown out, a lawyer for state Democrats and a good-government advocacy group told a panel of judges on Monday. "Republicans in the General Assembly have manipulated the district lines to guarantee that their party will control both the state House and the state Senate, regardless of how people vote," attorney R. Stanton Jones said as a civil trial began in state Superior Court in Raleigh. "This attack on representative democracy and voting rights is fundamentally unfair."

But a lawyer for Republican legislative leaders, Phillip Strach, said the plaintiffs were seeking to use "judicial fiat" to sidestep the electoral and legislative processes. "This lawsuit is not about protecting democracy," Strach said. "It is a full frontal assault on democracy."

The case being heard in the state capital is the first to reach trial since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that federal courts have no authority to curb partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing electoral maps to benefit one political party over another. But the decision does not prevent state courts from taking up the issue based on state constitutions. Last year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down that state's congressional map, which had allowed Republicans to dominate despite Pennsylvania's status as an evenly divided swing state.

Gerrymandering critics have said they hope a second victory in North Carolina could bolster similar efforts around the country. While the case does not specifically address the Southern state's congressional districts, a ruling outlawing partisan gerrymandering would likely apply equally to federal lines. A win for the plaintiffs would also improve Democrats' fortunes in next year's state legislative elections, after years of Republican control. The party in power will control redistricting for both U.S. congressional and state legislative maps in 2021 based on population data from next year's U.S. census.

Despite losing the statewide popular vote, Republicans won a majority of seats in both the state House of Representatives and the state Senate last year. "The simple truth is this: because of the extreme gerrymandering, Democrats cannot win a majority in the House or the Senate under the 2017 map," attorney Jones said.

But Strach countered that constitutional requirements, such as the need to keep counties undivided, leave little room for partisan manipulation. Democratic voters' natural tendency to cluster in urban areas is more responsible for the party's failure to win more seats, he argued. Whatever the verdict of the trial, the case is expected to end up before the state Supreme Court, where Democratic judges hold six of the seven seats.

 

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