The court uses kind of an obscenity standard. They know it when they see it. More complicated still, neither the Democratic state Senate nor the Republican state House will allow the enemy to extract political advantage from redistricting, so any new plan must preserve the current congressional balance of six Republican and six Democratic seats. Last Friday, the federal judges found the legislature's most recent effort to be unconstitutional, demanded a timetable for a new redrawing and threatened to draw the map themselves if lawmakers could not manage it. State Attorney General Mike Easley appealed the panel's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, and, should that fail, asked the court to allow this year's elections to be conducted under the rejected plan.
Cooper expects a ruling within a week.
If the state loses, catastrophe looms. The May 5 congressional primary will have to be pushed back, probably deep into September, and filing will be reopened while the legislature works on a new map. But it's causing everybody real problems. Watt, a black lawyer from Charlotte, has represented the 12th ever since it was created in 1992 as a result of the 1990 census. The second plan created a district extending 191 miles from Durham to Charlotte, scooping up black neighborhoods as it meandered southwest along Interstate 85.