September 30, 2025 Story by: Publisher
A federal judge on Tuesday upheld North Carolina’s state Senate map, rejecting arguments that Republican lawmakers had drawn district lines to weaken the political influence of Black voters.
The lawsuit alleged that the map fractured Black communities in northeastern North Carolina, but U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III — a George W. Bush appointee — concluded that the configuration did not violate the Voting Rights Act. In his 126-page opinion, Dever declined to order the legislature to create a majority-Black Senate district, stating that doing so would require “the odious practice of sorting voters by race.”
Dever was also critical of the evidence presented by the plaintiffs, calling their expert witnesses not credible and noting what he described as a “paucity of contemporary evidence of intentional discrimination” against Black voters. “It is not 1965 or 1982 in North Carolina. It is 2025,” he wrote.
“Plaintiffs ignore the progress that North Carolina has made over the past 60 years and seek to use the Voting Rights Act to sort voters by race in order to squeeze one more Democratic Senate district into the map.”
The three-judge panel overseeing the case wrapped up a six-day trial on Wednesday, July 9. The judges called on parties defending and attacking the maps to submit final written documents by Aug. 5.
Judges agreed Tuesday to rule in favor of Republican state legislators in two instances, according to court records. The panel rejected map critics’ arguments against state Senate Districts 40 and 41. At the same time, the judges “reserved ruling” on Senate District 8.
A federal trial began on June 16 in Winston‑Salem as a three-judge panel heard consolidated lawsuits challenging North Carolina’s 2023 congressional and state legislative district maps.
Plaintiffs, including the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Common Cause, and several individual voters, contend the districts amount to unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, violating the Equal Protection Clause and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In one case, plaintiffs led by the NAACP and Common Cause challenged maps lawmakers drew in 2023 for state House and Senate elections, along with the 14-district congressional map.
The NAACP suit alleges that lawmakers “unlawfully racially gerrymandered SD8, … in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment” and “Intentionally diluted Black voting power in violation of VRA Section 2 … and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments … in challenged Senate Districts.”
US Appeals Court Judge Allison Jones Rushing and US District Judges Richard Myers and Thomas Schroeder are overseeing two consolidated cases. All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
Judges allowed the targeted maps to be used during the 2024 election. If plaintiffs are successful, the Republican-led General Assembly could be forced to redraw election district lines for 2026.
The trial, held in Wake County Superior Court, is the latest front in a long-running fight over partisan gerrymandering, voter representation, and legislative control in one of the most politically contested states in the country.
Plaintiffs argue that legislators “Unlawfully diluted the power of Black voters on account of race in North Carolina’s historic Black Belt Senate Districts (SDs) 1 and 2 in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” according to a trial brief filed in May.
The NAACP suit alleges that lawmakers “unlawfully racially gerrymandered SD8, … in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment” and “Intentionally diluted Black voting power in violation of VRA Section 2 … and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments … in challenged Senate Districts.”
The map “eliminates two Black opportunity districts by cracking and packing Black voters in the Piedmont Triad and in Mecklenburg County,” according to the Williams plaintiffs’ trial brief. Plaintiffs label the lawmakers’ actions “intentionally discriminatory under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).”
Republican state legislative leaders defended the maps in a separate brief.
Lawmakers challenged the NAACP plaintiffs’ ability to challenge some districts. Legislative lawyers argued that the plaintiffs had standing to sue only if they had members living in the challenged districts.
“Consolidated Plaintiffs claim that North Carolina’s redistricting plans violate Section 2 of the [Voting Rights Act], the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment,” the three-judge panel wrote in April. “In each instance, the alleged harm to any voter arises from the boundaries and composition of the particular district in which the voter resides. The voter therefore ‘has standing to assert only that his own district has been’ gerrymandered or malapportioned, or his own vote diluted.”
Source: Carolina Journal / Raleigh News & Observer
