North Carolina GOP seeks Supreme Court intervention in voting map dispute

On Friday, Republican legislators in North Carolina requested that the Supreme Court stop state court rulings that struck down the newly-drawn voting districts, which had been drawn by Republicans.

The rulings said that the maps had been created as unfairly partisan as they also replaced the Republican map with one that had been drawn by outside experts.

The GOP lawmakers in their emergency filing asked the court to temporarily block the state court-imposed map as the justices are considering a forthcoming appeal.

“The United States Constitution is clear – state legislatures, not state judges, are responsible for setting the rules governing elections,” said North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore in a statement. “By striking the General Assembly’s congressional map and redrawing their own, with the help of Democrat partisans, the courts have, once again, violated the separation of powers.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, who is responsible for handling emergency matters from North Carolina, requested the respondents in the case, which is a group of North Carolina Democratic voters and voting rights advocates, to give a response by Wednesday.

The emergency filing is the latest development in the fight over election maps in the state as the redistricting process takes place once every decade. 

In early February, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the Republican-drawn congressional and legislative maps as being in violation of the state constitution, finding that the new redistricting plans amounted to “unlawful partisan gerrymanders.”

But North Carolina is not the only state finding issues in map making. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s new congressional maps, which have been considered controversial, could stay in place while it reviews a legal challenge to the maps.