Court rejects North Carolina's gerrmandered map

A federal court struck down North Carolina’s congressional map Monday, calling it an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and throwing the state’s House elections into uncertainty just 10 weeks before Election Day.

It is unusual for courts to throw out a political map so close to an election — but district court judges wrote that the case “presents unusual circumstances.” The Supreme Court vacated a similar decision earlier this year, ordering the district court to retry the case.

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A three-judge panel ultimately returned the same decision, finding that Republican state legislators had violated the First Amendment and the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when they drew congressional lines that favored their party. Ten of the state’s 13 House districts are held by Republicans, despite the state's political competitiveness.

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The court will appoint a “special master” to draw a remedial map — but it may also give the North Carolina legislature another chance to draw a “constitutionally compliant” plan, pending further submissions later this week. If so, the court gave the legislature a September 17 deadline to enact that plan.

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North Carolina has already held its 2018 congressional primaries. The court raised the option of candidates running in general election districts that were different than the ones in which their primaries were held. But the judges also floated the possibility that the state could instead hold primaries on Nov. 6, Election Day, and then hold special general election contests at a later date to be determined.

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Circuit Court Judge James Wynn wrote the opinion, and District Court Judge William Britt concurred. Wynn was appointed by former President Barack Obama and Britt was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter. District Court Judge William Osteen Jr., an appointee of former President George W. Bush, partially dissented from the decision.

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Another uncertain factor is the Supreme Court. The court already prevented a redraw of North Carolina’s congressional map earlier this year, and it could act to set aside the latest decision. But that would require agreement by five of the eight justices currently on the Court, which is shorthanded since Anthony Kennedy retired earlier this summer.

  Politico

Yet another reason to be concerned about Kavanaugh.

This winter, Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court threw out another GOP-drawn congressional map, ruling that legislators violated the state constitution’s guarantee of “free and equal” elections.

Republicans currently control 12 of Pennsylvania’s 18 House seats, but Democrats could have a majority in the delegation after midterm elections under a new court-drawn map, which broke up GOP-leaning districts in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs and the Lehigh Valley.