RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's 2022 primary election must be delayed — as gerrymandering lawsuits play out that could lead to redrawn districts — the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
It's a win for the liberal voters and groups that have challenged the new political maps for those races as being unconstitutionally gerrymandered, and a loss for the Republican lawmakers who drew the maps.
All primaries, not just the ones using disputed maps for U.S. House and the state House and Senate, are being delayed to May 17 from March 8.
The delay is needed, "In light of the great public interest in the subject matter of these cases, the importance of the issues to the constitutional jurisprudence of this state, and the need for urgency," the Supreme Court wrote.
The order did not indicate whether the justices took a formal vote or, if so, what the outcome was, but the court currently has a Democratic majority. Their ruling overturns an order by the Republican-majority Court of Appeals, which had on Monday night ruled that the primaries could continue on as planned.
The maps in question would give the GOP a sizable advantage in future elections, likely helping Republicans win a majority of seats even if Democrats win a majority of the statewide vote, according to several outside analyses. And they will be used in every election for the next decade — unless a court forces them to be redrawn, which Democrats are rooting for.
"Halting candidate filing and delaying the primary election are important steps towards ensuring North Carolina voters have the freedom to elect their representatives," North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Bobbie Richardson said in a news release Wednesday.
A top GOP redistricting official said in a press release Wednesday that the Democrats are the ones really trying to rig the system.
"The Democrats on the Supreme Court want districts that elect more Democrats, so they're blocking every election in the state until they get their way," said state Sen. Ralph Hise of Spruce Pine.
But the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, which brought one of the cases and accuses lawmakers of partisan and racial gerrymandering, said the delayed primary will allow voters to be heard in court.
"We will continue going to bat for voters so they will vote under fair maps for elections next year and beyond," Carrie Clark, the group's executive director, said in a statement. "This is the only way our people will get a General Assembly and congressional delegation that protect every North Carolinian's right to clean air, clean water, and clean energy."
Republican lawmakers argued in court filings Wednesday that it's not enough just for the challengers to prove that the maps are slanted — they should also have to prove that they are intentionally slanted.
And they preemptively criticized the decision to delay the primaries as "anti-democratic" if, they said, "any well-funded private citizen or public interest group can come to court, drop the label 'gerrymander' in a filing, and get an injunction impacting the voting opportunities of 10.4 million North Carolina residents, regardless of the merits of the case."
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, added in a statement that to "throw this process into chaos in the middle of filing leaves North Carolinians with uncertainty ahead of the election."
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said in his own statement that the order "restores faith in the rule of law."
Wednesday's ruling is far from the final say in either of the lawsuits that are challenging the maps, each of which make slightly different claims. GOP leaders could still prevail and keep their maps in place. But Republicans were hoping to at least hold the 2022 elections under the new maps, and Wednesday's order makes that appear less likely to happen.
In the past, trials in these sorts of lawsuits have taken years to play out. But now the Supreme Court is ordering a sped-up timeline. The trial must be finished by no later than Jan. 11, 2022, they ordered — barely a month from now. Their order also mandates a quick process for any appeals that might come after the trial.
All that, and the court's explicit invocation of "urgency," could indicate the justices hope to have the case wrapped up well before the May primaries, leaving enough time to redraw the maps if they are found to be unconstitutional.
Redistricting lawsuits are common in North Carolina. Democrats were found to have unconstitutionally gerrymandered the maps when they were in control in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Republicans then took control of the state Legislature — and therefore of redistricting, too — during the 2010 Tea Party wave. That let them redraw the state's political maps in 2011, as is required by law every decade to reflect new population data from the Census. Those maps were later found to be unconstitutional, as were the maps that they drew to replace them.
But the courts in the last decade typically did not act with the same fast pace as the Supreme Court is proposing now. In the end the elections of 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 were all held using unconstitutional maps.
