Gerrymandering/Redistricting

During the oral arguments, Neal Katyal, an attorney for the Common Cause organization, brought up past remarks that the Supreme Court made in the Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board case. "And Justice Thomas, it's the same point picking up on Justice Kavanaugh's questioning. Palm Beach, the court said that sovereignty was at its apex when talking about state constitutions and interpretations by state courts," Katyal said. "This Court never second-guessed state interpretations of their own constitutions." In Katyal's remarks, he specifically mentioned page 78 of the Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board ruling, where the Court said, "It is fundamental that state courts be left free and unfettered by us in interpreting their state constitutions."

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the important voting rights case Wednesday, Dec. 7. 

Chief Justice John Roberts implicitly ruled out support for the theory in a landmark 2019 decision, Rucho v. Common Cause, which stated that partisan gerrymanders were political matters outside the purview of federal courts. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in outlawing partisan maps, he wrote, citing a voter-approved amendment to the Florida Constitution that forbids maps drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.

Legal battles over partisan and racial gerrymandering “are as North Carolina as barbecue, tobacco fields and hot, humid summer days,” says the executive director of the state Common Cause chapter. North Carolina Common Cause Executive Director Bob Phillips said there has not been an election since 1971 in which the state’s redistricting plans have not been challenged. “In the decade after the 2010 redistricting cycle , every single legislative and congressional election was run on maps that the courts eventually ruled unconstitutional,” he said in a briefing for reporters. “I’m not sure there are many states, if any, that can make that claim.” “It’s almost unfathomable to imagine what will be imposed on North Carolina citizens if our state courts are no longer a place where a bad congressional map can be challenged,” Phillips said.

Kathay Feng from Common Cause, one of the groups leading the respondents, said, “It’s so much bigger than just the conversation about redistricting or gerrymandering.” 

“It is rare to encounter a constitutional theory so antithetical to the Constitution’s text and structure, so inconsistent with the Constitution’s original meaning, so disdainful of this Court’s precedent, and so potentially damaging for American democracy,” lawyers for Common Cause and the other non-state parties said in their brief.