January 24, 2026 Story by: Publisher
Two sets of plaintiffs who challenged North Carolina’s new congressional map in federal court have dropped their lawsuits. Federal judges had refused in November to block the map from being used for this year’s elections.
In filings submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, plaintiffs in cases known as Williams v. Hall and NAACP v. Berger filed a stipulation of dismissal Friday in US District Court.
The dismissal was filed “with prejudice,” meaning the same claims cannot be re-filed in federal court.
The legal challenge — notably embodied in cases known as Williams v. Hall and North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. Berger — had alleged that the legislature’s redistricting plan unlawfully diluted minority voting power and violated constitutional and statutory protections, including the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Background
A federal judicial panel in late November cleared significant portions of the congressional map drawn by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2023, rejecting key claims that the boundaries unlawfully diluted Black voting power.
In 2023, the North Carolina legislature adopted a new map for U.S. House districts. Under that plan, Republicans increased their advantage—turning what had been a 7-7 split in the state’s congressional delegation into a 10-4 Republican majority in the 2024 election.
A coalition of plaintiffs — including the state branch of the NAACP North Carolina State Conference, the advocacy group Common Cause and individual voters — sued, arguing the map unlawfully “packed” and “cracked” Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) and the U.S. Constitution.
The Republican-led General Assembly redrew the congressional map last October with Senate Bill 249 by shifting voters between Congressional Districts 1 and 3 in eastern North Carolina. Their stated goal was to help a GOP candidate win in District 1, a seat now held by Democratic US Rep. Don Davis. A Republican win in District 1 could shift the state’s US House delegation from 10-4 in Republicans’ favor to an 11-3 GOP advantage.
The court’s finding
The three-judge panel — all appointed by Republican presidents — concluded that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the General Assembly drew the 2023 congressional map with a discriminatory intent to minimize or cancel out the voting potential of Black North Carolinians. The court wrote:
“After considering all the evidence, we find that Plaintiffs have failed to prove that the North Carolina General Assembly drew … districts with the discriminatory purpose of minimizing or canceling out the voting potential of Black North Carolinians.”
The ruling covers five U.S. House districts (including clusters in the Greensboro and Charlotte regions) and also three state Senate districts that were challenged in the same litigation.
Importantly, the court did not rule on the state’s most recent mid-cycle adjustments to the 1st Congressional District and the 3rd Congressional District — changes that critics say aim to create an 11-3 Republican majority heading into 2026.
Bottom line
The court’s ruling means that the 2023 map stands in North Carolina, reinforcing the current Republican advantage in the delegation. It also underscores the high bar required to prove intentional racial discrimination in redistricting—a barrier that challengers found insurmountable in this case. Yet the story is not yet over: new maps and legal challenges loom on the horizon for 2026.
Source: Axios / AP News / The Carolina Journal / The Guardian / WUNC
