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Newly approved legislative district maps likely to face litigation

Ann Webb, policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, a government watchdog group, backed by voting rights advocates, addressed reporters in front of the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. The GOP-dominated legislature gave final approval to new congressional and state legislative district maps.
Rusty Jacobs
/
WUNC
Ann Webb, policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, a government watchdog group, backed by voting rights advocates, addressed reporters in front of the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. The GOP-dominated legislature gave final approval to new congressional and state legislative district maps.

The GOP-dominated North Carolina General Assembly has signed off on new Congressional and state legislative district maps. The plans are likely to face litigation.

Throughout the last decade, litigation over GOP gerrymandering led courts to discard various maps on the basis of race and excessive partisanship.

But Republicans won a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court in last year's midterms and GOP justices ruled that courts should not play a role in policing partisan gerrymandering. 

The new district maps are likely to deliver at least 10 out of 14 Congressional seats to the GOP--and a good shot at a veto-proof majority in the state legislature. 

Democratic state Senator Jay Chaudhuri called it a "bold and brazen" effort by the GOP, "That shuns the Constitution and solidify the majority's power."

Republicans maintain they applied traditional criteria to the maps, like minimizing the splitting of municipalities.