Supreme Court Denies Request to Expedite Briefing on North Carolina Gerrymandering Case in Maps Challenged by Campaign Legal Center

Issues

Today, the Supreme Court has decided to decline to expedite briefing in the North Carolina partisan gerrymandering cases. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) represent the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, one of the groups challenging the state’s 2016 congressional map. CLC, the SCSJ, and litigators representing Common Cause filed a request for expedited briefing on January 24.

“We will continue fighting for the citizens of North Carolina to be able to vote under fair maps in 2018, since the facts of the case remain strong,” said Ruth Greenwood, senior legal counsel, voting rights and redistricting at CLC. “The Supreme Court has the opportunity to adopt the standard for measuring partisan gerrymandering presented to the justices in the Wisconsin case – and by striking down those maps this term – have a clear path forward to doing the same in North Carolina. In both cases, bipartisan panels of judges have found that the gerrymanders are so extreme that they violate the constitution.”

This term, the Supreme Court will decide CLC’s case challenging Wisconsin’s state assembly maps as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. CLC and co-counsel represent 11 marginalized voters in the state in the landmark case, Gill v. WhitfordThe federal district court in North Carolina applied the same tests for measuring partisan symmetry as applied in the Wisconsin case, indicating that there is a manageable way to consistently measure what constitutes an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

Read more about the case League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. Rucho.