# Redistricting in North Carolina

Elections in North Carolina :
Federal government
U.S. President
1792
1796
1800
1804
1808
1812
1816
1820
1824
1828
1832
1836
1840
1844
1848
1852
1856
1860
1868
1872
1876
1880
1884
1888
1892
1896
1900
1904
1908
1912
1916
1920
1924
1928
1932
1936
1940
1944
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
2008
Dem
Rep
2012
2016
Dem
2020
Dem
Rep
2024
Dem
Rep
U.S. Senate
1789
1792
1795
1798
1799
1800
1804
1805 (sp)
1806
1810
1812
1814 (sp)
1815 (sp)
1816
1816 (sp)
1818
1822
1825
1846 (sp)
1828
1828 (sp)
1829
1829 (sp)
1830
1835
1836
1836 (sp)
1840 (sp)
1841
1843
1847
1849
1854 (sp)
1855
1858 (sp)
1861
1868
1872
1872 (sp)
1876
1879
1883
1884
1889
1890
1894
1894 (sp)
1897
1901
1903
1907
1909
1913
1914
1918
1920
1924
1926
1930
1932
1932 (sp)
1936
1938
1942
1944
1948
1948 (sp)
1950
1950 (sp)
1954
1954 (sp)
1956
1958 (sp)
1960
1966
1968
1972
1974
1978
1980
1984
1986
1986 (sp)
1990
1992
1996
1998
2002
2004
2008
2010
2014
2016
2020
2022
2026
U.S. House of Representatives
1790
1791
1793
1795
sp:4
1796
sp:4
1798
sp:10
1800
1801
sp:8
1802
sp:8
1803
1804
1805
sp:5
1806
sp:10
1808
sp:7
1810
1813
sp:3
1815
1816
sp:6
sp:8
1817
1818
sp:7
sp:11
1819
1821
sp:4
1823
1825
sp:2
1826
sp:8
1827
1829
sp:5
sp:10
1831
1833
1835
1837
1839
1841
1843
1845
1847
1849
1851
1853
1855
1857
1858
sp:8
1859
1865
1868
1870
1872
1874
1876
1878
1880
1882
1884
1886
1888
1890
1892
1894
1896
1898
1900
1902
1904
1906
1908
1910
1912
1914
1916
1918
1920
1928
1930
1934
1938
1940
1942
1946
1948
1950
1952
1956
1958
1960
sp:12
1968
1972
1980
1984
1986
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
sp:1
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
sp:12
2016
2018
9
2019
sp:3
sp:9
2020
2022
2024 :
State executive
Gubernatorial elections
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1810
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1838
1840
1842
1844
1846
1848
1850
1852
1854
1856
1858
1860
1862
1864
1865
1866
1868
1872
1876
1880
1884
1888
1892
1896
1900
1904
1908
1912
1916
1920
1924
1928
1932
1936
1940
1944
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
Lieutenant Governor elections
1936
1940
1944
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
Attorney General elections
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
Council of State elections
1996
2000
2004
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
Secretary of State elections
1940
1944
1996
2024 :
State legislature
State Senate elections
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024
State House elections
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024 :
State judiciary
Judicial elections
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
2016
2018
2020
2022
2024 :
Ballot measures
2012Amendment 1 :
Mayoral elections
Charlotte mayoral elections
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019
2022
Cary mayoral elections
2011
2015
2019
2023
Durham mayoral elections
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019
2021
2023
Fayetteville mayoral elections
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019
2022
Greensboro mayoral elections
2011
2013
2015
2017
2022
Raleigh mayoral elections
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
2013
2015
2017
2019
2022
2024
Winston-Salem mayoral elections
1997
2001
2005
2009
2013
2016
2020 :
vte :
Redistricting in North Carolina has been a controversial topic due to allegations and admissions of gerrymandering.

## Constitutional requirements

The Constitution of North Carolina states:
Article 1, Section 10:
   "All elections shall be free".
Article II, Section 3:
   The Senators shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators among those districts, subject to the following requirements:
   (1) Each Senator shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Senator represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Senators apportioned to that district; (2) Each senate district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a senate district;
   (4) When established, the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
Article II, Section 4:
   The Representatives shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives among those districts, subject to the following requirements:
   (1) Each Representative shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Representative represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Representatives apportioned to that district; (2) Each representative district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a representative district;
   (4) When established, the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.

## Prior to 2010

The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that partisan gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause and is a justiciable matter. However, the court found it difficult to apply the precedent in other cases. Only in one subsequent case, Republican Party of North Carolina v. Martin (1992), did a lower court strike down a redistricting plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds.$^{:783}$
Instead, the Supreme Court found it easier to rule on racial gerrymanders under existing federal law. While the Equal Protection Clause, along with Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, prohibit jurisdictions from gerrymandering electoral districts to dilute the votes of racial groups, the Supreme Court has held that in some instances, the Equal Protection Clause prevents jurisdictions from drawing district lines to favor racial groups. The Supreme Court first recognized these "affirmative racial gerrymandering" claims in Shaw v. Reno (Shaw I) (1993), holding that plaintiffs "may state a claim by alleging that [redistricting] legislation, though race neutral on its face, rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification". The Supreme Court reasoned that these claims were cognizable because relying on race in redistricting "reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole".$^{:649–650}$$^{:620}$ Later opinions characterized the type of unconstitutional harm created by racial gerrymandering as an "expressive harm",$^{:862}$ which law professor Richard Pildes and political scientist Richard Neimi have described as a harm "that results from the idea or attitudes expressed through a governmental action."

## 2010–2019

Following the Republican win of majorities in both houses of the General Assembly in the November 2010 elections, the Republican leadership set out to protect their wins by redrawing both legislative and congressional maps in their favor. This resulted in subsequent elections in which Republicans won a disproportionate number of seats, compared to the percentage of votes received by Republicans.

### Cooper v. Harris (2017)

On February 5, 2016, a three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina judges ruled that the 1st and 12th districts' boundaries were unconstitutional and required new maps to be drawn by the legislature to be used for the 2016 election. On May 22, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cooper v. Harris, agreed that the 1st and 12th congressional district boundaries were unlawful racial gerrymanders, the latest in a series of cases dating back to 1993 by different parties challenging various configurations of those districts since their first creation. The Republican General Assembly caucus proceeded to revise congressional maps for subsequent elections to be less racially-defined.

### Rucho v Common Cause (2019)

Yet another partisan redistricting case was heard by the Supreme Court during the 2018 term. Rucho v. Common Cause deals with Republican-favored gerrymandering in North Carolina. The District Court had ruled the redistricting was unconstitutional prior to Gill; an initial challenge brought to the Supreme Court resulted in an order for the District Court to re-evaluate their decision in light of Gill. The District Court, on rehearing, affirmed their previous decision. The state Republicans again sought for review by the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to issue its opinion by June 2018.
Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek were decided on June 27, 2019, which, in the 5–4 decision, determined that judging partisan gerrymandering cases is outside of the remit of the federal court system due to the political questions involved. The majority opinion stated that extreme partisan gerrymandering is still unconstitutional, but it is up to Congress and state legislative bodies to find ways to restrict that, such as through the use of independent redistricting commissions.

### Hofeller files

On the same day as the Rucho decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the federal government in Department of Commerce v. New York, stating that while the bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 United States census could be upheld under the Enumeration clause, the explanation provided by the Commerce Department for the question was insufficient. An advocate of the question, Thomas Hofeller, was also the chief redistricting expert employed by the North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee in the 2010s to redraw legislative and congressional maps for North Carolina and other states. One of his arguments noted that such a question "would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites." Following his death in August 2018, his estranged daughter turned over his documents to litigants in Commerce and other ongoing cases against the citizenship question in lower court, who subsequently filed motions to sanction the Department of Commerce for obfuscating Hofeller's role in how the question became framed.

### Common Cause v. Lewis (2019)

On September 3, 2019, the 3-judge panel (2 Democrat, 1 Republican) of the Wake County Superior Court unanimously struck down North Carolina's current legislative map as unconstitutional, without referring to federal law. Instead, the Court ruled that the map violated the state constitution's guarantees of free elections, equal protection, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The decision also cited the Hofeller files as evidence of the goal of the Republican Party to maximize the number of Republican seats in the General Assembly. The Superior Court gave the North Carolina General Assembly two weeks to draw up a new map prior to the 2020 election. The Senate President pro tempore Phil Berger announced that the Republican caucus would comply with the ruling and would not appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

## 2020-present

In 2020, the North Carolina State House of Representatives was tasked with redrawing district lines due to new census data. The census data was delayed due to COVID-19 complications. On November 5, the NC house voted on the maps and passed house map CBK-3, going from 13 districts to 14. On December 7, the North Carolina Supreme Court halted candidate filing due to pending lawsuits. On January 7, a panel of 3 judges ruled that maps were constitutional after a 3-day trial.
However, on February 4, 2022, the Supreme Court, by a 4–3 decision struck the maps down, saying that the maps were "unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt" under multiple clauses of North Carolina State Constitution. On February 23, the court upheld new maps approved by a Wake County trial court.

### Moore v. Harper (2023)

On February 25, 2022, the General Assembly requested a stay on the use of the maps drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court from the United States Supreme Court. While the stay was initially denied, a writ of certiorari was subsequently requested, and granted on June 30, 2022. The case deals with the Independent state legislature theory, based on the Elections Clause of the United States, and has been described as a potentially landmark case in the administration of federal elections in the United States.