Voters file challenge to new NC redistricting plan as racially discriminatory

The first legal challenge to North Carolina’s new congressional district lines came quickly. 

One day after the legislature approved a plan to change the 1st Congressional District from purple to red, voters have already told federal judges they want to contest it. 

The 1st District is already part of an unresolved lawsuit over racial gerrymandering. Some of the voters who brought that suit have asked the court to add the plan for the new district to it. 

The new district lines adopted this week dismantle a bloc of Black voters that has helped send a Black Democrat to Congress since 1992. 

North Carolina Republicans who redrew the lines this week said they were answering a call from President Donald Trump to increase GOP membership in the US House in next year’s election. Republicans have a thin majority in the House and could face losing it in the midterm election. 

The redrawn map would change the state’s congressional delegation from 10 Republicans and four Democrats to 11 Republicans and three Democrats. The Triangle and Charlotte would have the remaining Democratic districts. 

Republicans maintained they did not use racial data in redrawing the 1st District, but the amended complaint filed Thursday in the ongoing lawsuit said the new district violates the federal Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. 

The district as it was drawn for last year’s election is part of a federal lawsuit covering congressional and state Senate districts. It’s this lawsuit the voters want to update with a challenge to the new district. 

A three-judge panel heard arguments in the case this summer but has not issued a ruling. 

On Wednesday, the judges ordered lawyers to file briefs by Monday addressing what the new district lines mean for the existing case. 

Republican legislative leaders did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new challenge.

The 1st District has played an outsized role in the state’s civil rights history, the amended court complaint says. The district has elected a Black representative since 1992, when Eva Clayton became the first Black candidate since 1898 to win a U.S. House seat from North Carolina. US Rep. Don Davis narrowly won reelection to a second term in 2024. 

The new district boundaries dilute Black voting power in both the 1st District and the 3rd District, the complaint says, making it unlikely that Black residents will be able to elect the candidate of their choice in either of them. 

“Whatever the General Assembly’s partisan aims, they have—once again—chosen to target Black neighborhoods and communities to achieve them,” the complaint says. 

Also on Thursday, lawyers with the nonprofit group Forward Justice said they plan to sue over the new district, but they have not yet filed that suit.