More chaos and uncertainty

There’s a lot going on this week in the legislature and North Carolina politics. Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued two rulings on gerrymandering cases that affect North Carolina elections. Also, today, the legislature is going into session but GOP leaders won’t say why.

The first gerrymandering decision denied Common Cause’s motion to redraw the Congressional districts that a lower court found unconstitutional due to partisan gerrymandering. That order was stayed by the Supreme Court and the ruling yesterday upheld the stay. That means North Carolina Congressional candidates will run under the districts drawn in 2016.

In the decision, Justices Sotomayor and Ginsberg voted to lift the stay. One court watcher thinks that their action is an indication that the court is about to rule against partisan gerrymanders in two cases it heard earlier this year. He reasons that Ginsberg and Sotomayor probably know the outcome of the partisan gerrymandering cases and that the partisan maps were found unconstitutional so the ones in NC will be, too. It’s speculative and a bit convoluted reasoning but worth a read.

The second decision allows for most legislative districts to proceed under the maps drawn by the special master. However, the ones in Mecklenburg and Wake will not. The districts in the new maps were all affected directly by racial gerrymandering. The ones in Wake and Mecklenburg were contested because, while they were not affected by gerrymandering, the GOP redrew them to give them an advantage after attempting to fix the racial gerrymanders. They were contested because the state constitution doesn’t allow redrawing in the middle of the decade. It’s almost too confusing to explain.

Read more: https://www.politicsnc.com/more-chaos-and-uncertainty/