Carolina Public Press – North Carolina’s recently redrawn 2025 congressional district map appears likely to stand for the 2026 midterm elections.
A panel of federal judges ruled Wednesday, siding with Republican legislators by rejecting a challenge to the map, which made the First Congressional District a safer bet for Republicans in 2026.
The ruling comes a week after the same panel of judges dismissed claims that 2023 legislative and congressional maps illegally discriminated against Black and Latino voters. Thus far, that ruling has not been appealed. If it is, it will go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. The same goes for any appeals to the judges’ ruling Wednesday over the 2025 maps.
Republican-appointed Judges Richard Myers, Thomas Schroeder and Allison Rushing were not persuaded by any of the arguments against the 2025 map.
While they conceded that the new map would make it less likely for Black voters in northeastern North Carolina’s First and Third Congressional districts to elect their preferred candidates, they said that wasn’t enough to strike the map down.
Race and partisan preference are highly correlated in those congressional districts, they wrote. Since partisan gerrymandering is allowed, the plaintiffs have to prove an intent to discriminate based on race, not just a discriminatory effect.
Plaintiffs did not make a “clear showing” of that, the judges ruled.
The plaintiffs also failed to convince the panel that a new argument against mid-decade redistricting based on the First Amendment was likely to succeed in the broader lawsuit. Plaintiff attorney Hilary Klein argued at a preliminary hearing that court rulings allowing partisan gerrymandering came about because courts had no good way to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable use of party data to draw congressional district lines without entering a political realm.
But, those were cases where legislatures were required to redistrict due to a new U.S. Census or a court mandate, while this was not, she argued. The only reason for the 2025 redraw of the congressional districts was for political gain. Klein argued that the very act of “picking up the pen” was unconstitutional without a “legitimate” reason, because it retaliated against voters based on their political choices in the last election.
The judges said they couldn’t quite make the distinction. Despite the First Amendment framing, they wrote that “they are essentially complaints about partisan gerrymandering,” which courts cannot deal with after key state and federal court rulings in recent years.
Even if the ruling is appealed, there won’t be enough time before the candidate filing start date, Dec. 1, to resolve the issue. So, for now, the 2025 North Carolina congressional district map stands.
After the court’s ruling, Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, released a celebratory statement.
“President Trump deserves a Congress that will fight for American citizens and move his agenda forward,” he wrote. “Today’s decision thwarts the radical left’s latest attempt to circumvent the will of the people.”
