NC legislative leaders to ask Supreme Court to halt judges' order to redraw districts

RALEIGH -- The U.S. Supreme Court should quickly rule against a lower court that on Monday found North Carolina’s Congressional districts are illegally gerrymandered, the state’s top legislators said Tuesday afternoon.

House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger lead the Republican-controlled General Assembly that’s in charge of drawing the maps used to elect members of Congress. In a written statement, they said they plan to ask the Supreme Court to step in and issue a stay in a court case that Berger, Moore and other legislators lost on Monday in front of a panel of three federal judges.

“In yesterday’s decision, the three-judge panel forecasted voiding the results of primaries and canceling the November election for Congress,” their statement said. “Such an action would irreparably disrupt campaigns from both major parties across the state that have been organizing, raising money and trying to win over voters.”

The judges did not necessarily say they were going to cancel the November elections. They ruled that the state’s 13 Congressional districts are unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, and that they were intentionally drawn to give Republicans an undue amount of power and diminish the First Amendment rights of non-Republican voters and politicians in North Carolina.

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