Multiple civil rights organizations and activists in North Carolina have filed a lawsuit against allegedly racist redistricting in the Tar Heel State that they say will diminish the power of Black voters.
The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Common Cause North Carolina—an organization to protect voting rights, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, filed the lawsuit accusing North Carolina’s state Senate, House, and board of elections of discriminatory gerrymandering.
“In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly redrew its state legislative and congressional plans to severely diminish the voting power of North Carolina’s Black voters,” the lawsuit stated. “The General Assembly achieved this by intentionally dismantling existing and longstanding Black opportunity districts and diluting Black voting power.”
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The lawsuit claims Black voters were purposefully targeted throughout the state, violating the Voting Rights Act and 14th and 15th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
Southern Coalition for Social Justice Attorney Hilary Harris Klein told The Daily Beast that the state has already seen 2024 candidates drop out of the race as a result of the redistricting.
“They're predominantly candidates of choice for Black voters,” she said. “[Rep.] Kathy Manning [D-NC], who was in Congressional District Six, is a quintessential example. She's been completely cut out of her districts because Black voters have been denied any opportunity in the Greensboro, the Triad area, of any representation in Congress. This will be the first time they'll have no representation.”
After the 2020 census results were released in Aug. 2021, North Carolina began to redesign its congressional, state house, and state senate maps. According to the lawsuit, North Carolina’s General Assembly specifically targeted Black residential areas and neglected to address any possible Voting Rights Act violations while devising the new voting districts.
Once new districts were decided by the state’s congress, hearings were supposed to be held for the public to provide comments and suggestions, but the lawsuit claims that meetings were held in different locations than what was originally given. Public meetings were also allegedly held during the day when many people had to work, the lawsuit claims. The complaint also alleges that secret maps were pre-drawn out of public view and that maps were “passed along strict party lines, within only a week of being publicly proposed.”
“The 2023 Appropriations Act also made dramatic changes to North Carolina’s public records law overall that further threaten the transparency of the redistricting process,” the lawsuit stated.
Gerrymandered district maps included in the lawsuit show areas of concentrated Black populations and how they were paired with other areas in the state that didn’t share similar interests.
“Instead of uniting counties along the North Carolina-Virginia border… Black Belt counties are paired with coastal communities hundreds of miles away, resulting in extremely noncompact districts. In fact, the only way to navigate from one end of Senate District 2 to the other is by ferry travel, as the southern portion of the district is contiguous with the northern portion of the district only by water,” the lawsuit alleges. “These coastal communities have different needs and interests from the Black Belt, are much wealthier on average, and are overwhelmingly white.”
Klein said the redistricting is shameful.
“They, obviously, knew exactly what they were doing when they drew those districts, what it would do to Black voters in particular,” she told The Daily Beast. “We've already seen the candidates just drop out and not even try.”
According to Politico, the new maps make it easier for Republicans to maintain control of the state, causing state Reps. Wiley Nickel and Jeff Jackson to not seek re-election and for Rep. Don Davis’ seat to become more competitive. Along with Manning, they’re Democrats. The outlet states that the redistricting could flip at least four House seats to Republicans and boost the party’s thin House majority.
The complaint also stated that racial tensions play a part in voting.
“The racial polarization of voting in North Carolina is rooted in the state’s founding and history as a slave society, in which the state’s social, economic, political, and cultural institutions were each heavily intertwined with and influenced by chattel, race-based slavery,” read the lawsuit. “Racial discrimination in North Carolina not only endured after slavery was abolished but was codified in 1866 in the North Carolina Black Codes…[which] severely restricted the rights of Black citizens and sought to recreate conditions of slavery. The legal invalidation of the Black Codes, rather than empowering Black people in the state, gave rise to a pattern of Black disenfranchisement that endures today.”
The voting rights activists who launched the lawsuit want North Carolina’s 2023 senate, house, and congressional plans to all be deemed unlawful for attempting to diminish Black voting power. They also demand new and more fair maps to be set in place by the 2026 election cycle.
