{"id":178755,"date":"2018-08-28T19:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/28\/north-carolina-just-got-interesting\/"},"modified":"2018-08-28T19:14:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T00:14:00","slug":"north-carolina-just-got-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/28\/north-carolina-just-got-interesting\/","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina Just Got Interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The appeals court <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/28\/us\/politics\/congressional-maps-north-carolina-elections.html\">has ruled that the Congressional districts in North Carolina are unconstitutional<\/a>, and they may demand that the districts be redrawn before the election.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s 10 weeks:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A panel of three federal judges again declared North Carolina\u2019s congressional district map to be unconstitutional, ruling on Monday that it was gerrymandered to unfairly favor Republican candidates.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The decision, which may have significant implications for control of Congress after the midterm elections, is likely to be appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which for the moment is evenly split on ideological lines without a ninth justice to tip the balance.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Though North Carolina\u2019s voters tend to divide about evenly between the two parties, Republicans currently hold 10 of the state\u2019s 13 House seats. A redrawn district map may put more of the seats within Democrats\u2019 reach.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The three judges had ruled unanimously in January that the state\u2019s House map violated the First and 14th Amendments by unfairly giving one group of voters \u2014 Republicans \u2014 a bigger voice than others in choosing representatives.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But the Supreme Court declined in June to hear an appeal in the case, sending it back for reconsideration under guidelines it had set out in a different case about who had legal standing to challenge the map.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In a lengthy ruling on Monday, the panel reached largely the same conclusion that it had in January. And the judges agreed that the plaintiffs in the case \u2014 voting-rights advocacy groups and residents of each of North Carolina\u2019s 13 districts \u2014 had standing to bring the suit.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The judges left open the possibility that they could order new maps to be drawn before the 2018 election, either by the North Carolina General Assembly or by a special master appointed by the court.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Pass the popcorn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The appeals court has ruled that the Congressional districts in North Carolina are unconstitutional, and they may demand that the districts be redrawn before the election. That&#8217;s 10 weeks: A panel of three federal judges again declared North Carolina\u2019s congressional district map to be unconstitutional, ruling on Monday that it was gerrymandered to unfairly favor &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[413,407,486,639],"class_list":["post-178755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-civil-rights","tag-justice","tag-schadenfreude","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}