(Reuters) – A panel of North Carolina judges upheld the state’s new congressional map on Tuesday, rejecting claims from Democratic voters and advocacy groups that the redrawn district lines illegally favor Republicans.
The decision, which will likely be appealed, could have an outsized impact on the 2022 midterm elections in November, when control of the closely divided U.S. Congress will be at stake.
The lawsuit, backed by Democratic and civil rights groups, had asserted that the new map ensures that Republicans will win a majority of the state’s 14 congressional districts, even in elections in which more Democratic voters cast ballots.
During a trial last week, experts for the plaintiffs testified that the map represented an extreme outlier, compared with thousands of computer-generated alternatives.
Lawyers for Republican lawmakers, who approved the map in November, said it was the product of a legal process and argued that courts cannot reasonably determine whether partisan interests went too far.
The case is expected to reach the North Carolina Supreme Court in the coming weeks. The state’s top court already delayed the primary election from March to May to allow time for the lawsuit to proceed.
Federal law requires states to draw new congressional lines every 10 years to account for population shifts, after the U.S. Census completes its once-a-decade count. In most states, legislators control the process, leading to the practice of gerrymandering, in which one party engineers political maps to benefit itself.
The new map would give Republicans 10 or 11 seats statewide, even though the state is considered a perennial battleground in national elections. Republicans currently control eight of the state’s 13 districts; North Carolina is gaining a 14th district thanks to a fast-growing population.
The case is among numerous pending lawsuits challenging congressional maps in at least half a dozen states, including Texas, Ohio and Georgia, according to New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking redistricting litigation.
Republicans need to flip only a handful of seats in the Nov. 8 elections to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Democrats hold a 221-212 edge, including vacancies.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
