Raleigh, N.C.
– As part of a national campaign to use partisan courts to draw Democrats into power, a North Carolina liberal activist group filed a lawsuit this past November asking the Democratic-controlled North Carolina state courts to throw out maps that they say favor Republicans and replace them with maps that favor Democrats.
But the “unconstitutional” legislative districts the plaintiffs cited in their lawsuit were
endorsed
by the plaintiffs less than two years ago.
The lawsuit, filed by Common Cause and the North Carolina Democratic Party, alleges that North Carolina House districts 2, 7, 25, and 32 are all unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. In 2017, Common Cause
submitted maps
to the General Assembly’s Joint Redistricting Committee with those four districts drawn exactly the same way they are now. Common Cause believed those maps to be perfectly legitimate in 2017 but now calls those same maps unconstitutional.
“Since Democrats didn’t win under the maps they supported in 2017, they’re now calling those same maps unconstitutional. At what point does the media and the public finally dismiss the falsehood that this lawsuit is all about ‘fair maps’ and accept the reality: Democrats are using the courts to hand them the power they couldn’t win from voters?”
said Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee Chairman Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell).
Thwarted in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the ballot box, this lawsuit is part of a nationwide strategy of turning to liberal state courts under the guise of “fair maps.” In reality, these groups, like Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, seek to have Democratic state courts effectively rewrite state Constitutions – with no public input – to draw new maps that favor Democrats.
The North Carolina lawsuit alleges the state Constitution has a heretofore undiscovered provision that bans partisan considerations in redistricting and requires proportionality. That provision presumably went undiscovered during the 140 years Democrats drew maps that favored themselves. If the Democrats on the court accept the Democratic Party’s arguments, they’ll have invented a brand new interpretation of the Constitution that hasn’t existed for 200 years – all to draw new districts that elect more Democrats.
“If Democratic judges manipulate the State Constitution to expand their party's power in the legislative branch, we are looking at a full-blown constitutional crisis,”
said Hise.
“That's the end of the rule of law.”
###
