North Carolina Redistricting Plan Advances
By Geoff Earle, CQ Staff Writer
(CQ, May 23) -- North Carolina's state legislature has overwhelmingly approved a new redistricting plan, but it still must get the go-ahead from a federal judicial panel that could decide to redo the map itself.
The state House passed the plan on May 20, and the state Senate followed suit the next day -- just in time for a May 22 deadline imposed by the panel. (CQ Weekly, p. 1063)
The federal, three-judge panel had ordered the legislature to produce a new map after ruling on April 3 that the 12th District, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Melvin Watt, was unconstitutionally gerrymandered on the basis of race. (CQ Weekly, p. 947)
The ruling forced North Carolina to postpone its congressional elections from May 5 to Sept. 15.
Legislators faced two main obstacles in trying to cobble together new congressional districts in a matter of weeks. One was fashioning a compromise that would satisfy Republicans, who control the state House, and Democrats, who control the state Senate and were eager to maintain the state's 6-6 balance in the congressional delegation. The other was drawing a map that would meet the approval of the federal panel overseeing the case.
Under the new plan, the percentage of black voters in Watt's district would drop from 45 percent to 33 percent. The plan also would change the neighboring 5th, 6th, 9th and 10th districts. The new map makes Watt's elongated district wider, although it still stretches from Charlotte to Winston-Salem.
Robinson Everett, the Duke University law professor who is representing the plaintiffs in the case, said that the new district is still unconstitutional and that he will continue to fight it. Everett has argued that current incarnations of the map represent the "fruit of the poisonous tree" because they are descended from the same map that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in 1996.
The Justice Department also must approve the new map.
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