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The Supreme Court on Monday struck down two North Carolina congressional districts, ruling that lawmakers had violated the Constitution by relying too heavily on race in drawing them.

The court rejected arguments from state lawmakers that their purpose in drawing the maps was not racial discrimination but partisan advantage.

The decision was the court’s latest attempt to solve a constitutional puzzle: how to disentangle the roles of race and partisanship when black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats. The difference matters because the Supreme Court has said that only racial gerrymandering is constitutionally suspect.

Election law experts said the ruling would make it easier to challenge voting districts based partly on partisan affiliations and partly on race.

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“This will lead to many more successful racial gerrymandering cases in the American South and elsewhere,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Democrats welcomed the ruling.

“This is a watershed moment in the fight to end racial gerrymandering,” Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general and the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement. “North Carolina’s maps were among the worst racial gerrymanders in the nation.”

Conservatives complained that the Supreme Court had succeeded only in making the law murkier.

“The Supreme Court says race can be a factor in redistricting, but not the predominant factor, a rule that is so vague, so broad and so lacking in a definable legal standard that it is not really a rule at all,” Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer with the Heritage Foundation, said in a statement.

The ruling on Monday was the second Supreme Court victory for North Carolina Democrats this month. Last Monday, the justices declined to hear an appeal of a decision that had struck down parts of a restrictive North Carolina voting law that, among other things, tightened voter identification requirements and cut back on early voting.

A federal appeals court had ruled that the restrictions were an unconstitutional effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Skjellyfetti wrote:Yeah, gerrymandering is shameful no matter who is doing it.

We need a complete reform of redistricting.

89Hen wrote:

Skjellyfetti wrote:Yeah, gerrymandering is shameful no matter who is doing it.

We need a complete reform of redistricting.

Funny thing is that nationwide it may net out to zero effect in swinging the needle either way.

kalm wrote:If you're ideas are superior you shouldn't have to gerrymander.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:If you're ideas are superior you shouldn't have to gerrymander.

Your

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote: Your

****!

Skjellyfetti wrote:

89Hen wrote: Funny thing is that nationwide it may net out to zero effect in swinging the needle either way.

I don't think so.

For instance - in 2016 Democrats in NC won 47% of the vote and Republicans won 53% of the vote.

Looking at the vote and an equable distribution - Republicans should have won 7 seats and Democrats should have been expected to win 6 seats.

Republicans won 10 seats and Democrats won 3 seats.

It's even more stark in years that were better for Democrats like 2012.

In 2012 in North Carolina - Democrats won 51% of the statewide House vote and Republicans won 49% of the statewide House vote.

Democrats won 4 seats and Republicans won 9 seats.



The best estimate I've seen says that Democrats would need to with 56% of the House vote nationally to win back the House.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
****!

Gotta fix that spell-check, Klam. I know you know the proper usages.

Still can't figure out how my iPad confuses Cruz with boobs.

Fvck!

kalm wrote:If you're ideas are superior you shouldn't have to gerrymander.

Ivytalk wrote:How hard could it be to input a bunch of demographic data and let a computer do the redistricting? Serious question. Could the state legislators even agree on the inputs?

Skjellyfetti wrote:Read last sentence: Democrats need ~56% of the House vote nationally to win the House. If Democrats and Republicans tied nationally - Republicans would control the House by a fairly large margin.

I'm not disputing whether or not Maryland is gerrymandered. But, if redistricting was reformed nation-wide - there would be noticeable repercussions.

Grizalltheway wrote:

Ivytalk wrote: Gotta fix that spell-check, Klam. I know you know the proper usages.

Still can't figure out how my iPad confuses Cruz with boobs.

Fvck!

Don't go making any assumptions now...directional school and all...

Aho Old Guy wrote:
Those loopy Rightie Goobs in the NC Generous Assembly have been seriously spanked by various courts more than a dozen times for their on-going partisan dumbassery. They should stick to praying-away hurricanes, pumping sand and dredging the Oregon Inlet.

They could finish the Hwy 321 four-lane sometime this century. Is that too much to ask for?

And, Lord forbid, raising highway revenues by tolling the deadbeats from SC on 77-North at the State line. Or 95-North. The Goobs are happy ('PRIVATE') tolling inter-local highway traffic on 77 North/South from Lake Norman. Morons.

Berger, Moore, Rucho, et. al., have elevated North Carolina to full Clown-Car Status in NeanderCon Fantasy Land. Congrats, or something ...

The General Assembly, then controlled by Democrats, responded in early 1992 by enacting the famous 12th. Republican legislators had proposed several plans that contained two minority districts; in drawing the 12th, the Democratic leaders simply picked one of those plans and retooled it to be friendlier to Democrats.

In drawing the 12th in 1992, the General Assembly made use of the politically powerful Black community of Durham, removing it from the one minority district of the rejected 1991 plan. The 1st district in the 1992 plan was a predominantly Black district that, without Durham, was less compact. The State would later defend the two minority districts of 1992 as based on demographics other than race, with the 12th an urban Piedmont district and the 1st a rural eastern district.