US Supreme Court stays remap order in partisan gerrymandering case from North Carolina
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The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily stayed an order requiring North Carolina to redraw congressional districts in a partisan gerrymandering case.
The stay issued Thursday evening remains in place pending disposition of an appeal, report the Washington Post, the New York Times, SCOTUSblog, Politico and the Election Law Blog. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have denied the stay.
The Times calls the high court’s decision to grant a stay “expected and not particularly telling.” The Supreme Court has accepted two cases claiming it is unconstitutional to redraw voting district lines based on partisan considerations and has issued stays in similar situations.
The Supreme Court has overturned electoral maps because of racial gerrymandering, but it has never struck down a map because of partisan gerrymandering. The federal court that struck down the North Carolina congressional map because it was unconstitutionally partisan was the first to issue such a ruling.
Under the North Carolina map, Republican candidates prevailed in 10 of the state’s 13 congressional districts despite receiving only 53.22 percent of the statewide vote.
The federal court considering the North Carolina map had ordered lawmakers to draw a new map by Jan. 24, and to file the map with the court by Jan. 29.
The stay in the North Carolina case makes it likely that midterm elections will be conducted in the state using the maps that favored Republican candidates, according to the articles.
The case is Rucho v. Common Cause.
