New York Times: As Gerrymanders Get Worse, Legal Options to Overturn Them Dwindle

Voting-rights advocates are in a North Carolina state court in Raleigh this month, arguing in three lawsuits that Republican gerrymanders of the State Legislature and the state’s 14 seats in the House of Representatives are so extreme that they violate the state Constitution.

Only two years ago, some of the same lawyers were arguing that remarkably similar Republican gerrymanders of the same legislature, drawn a decade ago, violated the same clauses of the constitution. That trial ended with a resounding verdict in their favor, but only after the gerrymandered maps were used for almost a decade.

Winning those kinds of cases, however belatedly, now appears much more of a long shot. Experts say that even as gerrymanders become ever more egregious, the legal avenues to overturn them are becoming narrower. …

With a Democratic governor, two Republican senators and a split record in recent presidential elections — the state voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Republicans narrowly since then — North Carolina voters are as evenly divided as any in the nation. But legislative and congressional maps approved this month by the Republican-controlled Legislature lopsidedly favor Republicans.

According to PlanScore.org, a nonpartisan website, if the North Carolina vote under the new maps were split 50-50 between the two parties following recent voting patterns, it would give Republicans a 64-56 edge in the State House and a 32-18 margin in the State Senate.

The new congressional map is even more tilted, giving Democrats an advantage in only three of the state’s 14 House seats, down from the five they hold now.

The racial impact of the maps is sweeping. The government accountability watchdog group Common Cause said a quarter of the 36 state legislative seats held by African Americans, all Democrats, would be likely to flip Republican. The district containing the seat that a Black congressman, Representative G.K. Butterfield, has occupied since 1992 also lost much of its Black constituency, and he chose to retire at the end of this term. …

This year is different in one key respect: All three suits have been filed in state court, the only courts left to contest partisan gerrymanders — and the courts that gave plaintiffs their rare victory in 2019.

In one, the N.A.A.C.P. and Common Cause claim new maps of the State House and State Senate break state rules aimed at complying with the Voting Rights Act. Another, by the state League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, argues that both the legislative and congressional maps are racial and partisan gerrymanders.