Associated Press: NC trial looks at partisan bias after US justices won’t

Associated Press: NC trial looks at partisan bias after US justices won’t

“State courts do not need to sit idly by while people’s constitutional rights are being violated just because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to act,” Common Cause attorney Stanton Jones told a three-judge panel in Raleigh. His clients want new maps drawn for the 2020 elections.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A partisan gerrymandering trial began Monday in North Carolina, where election advocacy groups and Democrats hope state courts will favor them in the kind of political mapmaking dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court just declared is not the business of the federal courts.

Lawyers for Common Cause, the state Democratic Party and more than 30 registered Democratic voters who sued contend Republican lawmakers so etched politics into the state House and Senate district lines that the constitutional rights of Democratic voters were violated. Republicans counter that the Democrats are simply asking courts to use “raw political power” to take redistricting responsibilities from the legislature. The trial is expected to last up to two weeks.

It commenced less than three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a separate case involving North Carolina’s congressional map that it’s not the job of federal courts to decide if boundaries are politically unfair. But Chief Justice John Roberts also wrote in the majority opinion that state courts could have a role to play in applying standards set in state laws and constitutions. …

“State courts do not need to sit idly by while people’s constitutional rights are being violated just because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to act,” plaintiffs’ attorney Stanton Jones told a three-judge panel in Raleigh. His clients want new maps drawn for the 2020 elections. …

Jones said his clients plan to use files from Tom Hofeller, a now-deceased GOP redistricting consultant who helped draw the 2017 maps, to “prove beyond a doubt that partisan gain was his singular objective.”

Hofeller’s estranged daughter alerted Common Cause to the existence of his computer files, which were later subpoenaed. Stephanie Hofeller was deposed before the trial to describe how she discovered the files. The Republicans’ lawyers said the Hofeller files the plaintiffs want to use don’t prove the GOP legislators who ultimately approved the maps were led by excessive partisanship.

Some of Hofeller’s files ended up being used in separate litigation in other states challenging a plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to include a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. census.