New redistricting lawsuit asks NC courts to say fair elections are a constitutional right, and that gerrymandering violates it

North Carolina’s constitution guarantees voters the right to fair elections, though it doesn’t explicitly say it, and election districts drawn for partisan advantage violate voters’ rights, a new lawsuit claims. 

Former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr is representing a group of Democratic and unaffiliated voters, including former UNC system President Tom Ross Sr. and former Democratic state Sen. Allen Wellons, in the lawsuit filed in state Superior Court. 

The suit names congressional and legislative districts whose boundaries were altered last year to give Republicans advantages in races for Congress and the state legislature. 

“When there is an intentional aggregation and apportionment of voters in a district that tilts the election towards one political party or candidate and, therefore, potentially preordains the outcome of the election, then a ‘fair’ election cannot take place and the constitutional rights of the voters have been violated,” the lawsuit says. 

Orr is a former Republican who is now registered unaffiliated. 

The suit names as defendants the State Board of Elections, House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger.

This is the fourth lawsuit filed over election boundaries Republicans approved last year along partisan lines. 

Earlier suits have challenged Senate districts in northeastern North Carolina, four newly drawn congressional districts, and a collection of legislative and congressional districts on claims of racial gerrymandering. 

The lawsuit filed Wednesday differs from the others because it seeks to have the court declare that citizens have the right to fair elections under the constitution, and that gerrymandered districts violate that right. 

In early 2022 a Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court rejected congressional and legislative districts Republican legislators drew as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders and ordered new plans.

Orr and Ross were two of the three “special masters” the Supreme Court appointed to help evaluate the new legislative plans. They okayed the state House and Senate maps that were used in the 2022 election. They rejected the legislature’s second attempt at a congressional plan for 2022 and ended up creating one.  

Voters elected seven Democrats and seven Republicans to Congress in 2022 using the court-ordered map. 

Republicans won control of the state Supreme Court in November 2022 and later reversed the Democratic justices’ anti-gerrymandering decisions. 

Republican legislators drew new district plans that they said were created to give Republicans advantages. 

The new congressional plan created 10 strong Republican districts, three Democratic districts, and one toss-up district. 

An analysis by Duke mathematicians said that the new redistricting plans are more gerrymandered than those the court threw out in 2022. 

The lawsuit focuses on changes to congressional districts 6, 13, and 14. Democrats won those districts in 2022. None of those Democratic incumbents are running for reelection this year because they now don’t have a chance to win in the new districts. 

It was Republicans’ intent “to support their party’s candidates and move them into the above referenced districts; take certain voters likely to not support their party’s candidates out of their district and move them into districts where their votes would be negated or minimized so as to not be determinative in deciding the outcome of the election,” the lawsuit says. 

The lawsuit offers up new state House District 105 as one the court should examine. House District 105 was drawn to give Rep. Tricia Cotham a district she could win. Cotham won in 2022 as a Democrat running in a strong Democratic district. She switched parties last year, giving Republicans a veto-proof majority in the state House. 

The lawsuit also details changes in New Hanover’s Senate District 7. The new map cuts Black and mostly Democratic neighborhoods out of the district and adds them to a district dominated by Repubican Brunswick and Columbus counties. The district has gone from a toss-up to one that leans Republican, the lawsuit says.