Top state Republican lawmakers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to wade back into North Carolina's redistricting battle Friday, making a last-ditch effort to block a congressional voting map that was approved this week by state courts.
"The United States Constitution is clear—state legislatures, not state judges, are responsible for setting the rules governing elections," Speaker of the state House Tim Moore said in a statement. "By striking the General Assembly’s congressional map and redrawing their own, with the help of Democrat partisans, the courts have, once again, violated the separation of powers. This effort to circumvent the elected representatives of the people will not stand."
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The country's highest court may not take the case, and it's not yet clear when that decision will be announced. Lawmakers argue that state courts violated the elections clause of the U.S. Constitution by taking away the General Assembly's power to draw the congressional map.
Allison Riggs, one of several attorneys for plaintiffs who sued state lawmakers in a lawsuit over the maps, said the GOP filing was "disappointing, but not surprising."
"Legislative Defendants are outrageously asking the United States Supreme Court to insert itself into state law in an unprecedented way," Riggs said in a statement. "As recently as 2019, the Supreme Court said state courts are empowered to rely on state constitutions and state law to reign in partisan gerrymandering. We are confident this specious attempt to undermine our judiciary will be rejected."
The filing does not challenge state House and Senate maps, which also won court approval this week but were drawn by lawmakers themselves, albeit under a court order. It only seeks to block the congressional map.
Redistricting has been a confusing, back-and-forth affair for months in North Carolina as progressive groups sought to have the General Assembly's initial map-making efforts tossed out as a partisan gerrymanders. They were successful, and in the fallout a three-judge panel brought in a group of redistricting consultants, called special masters. They in turn hired researchers to help draw a new congressional map that was ultimately approved by the three-judge panel. That map was blessed by the state Supreme Court over a competing map lawmakers drew at the court's behest.
That process shifted the potential balance of power, yielding a congressional map likely to elect more Democrats than expected under the Republican-controlled legislature's efforts. Many North Carolina Republicans were incensed, arguing the court usurped the legislature's authority and complaining of the makeup of the special master's team.
If the state GOP's motion is successful, North Carolina's primary elections, now scheduled for May 17, could be delayed. Filing in these races opened Thursday after the state Supreme Court upheld the maps late Wednesday. Filing closed for the weekend at 5 p.m. Friday and is scheduled to start again Monday morning unless the U.S. Supreme Court steps in.
The GOP's court filing argues that the issue is important enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in stay the state Supreme Court's decision.
"The question presented here goes to the very core of this nation’s democratic republic," the filing states. "What entity has the Constitutional authority to set the rules of the road for federal elections, the means we use to 'exercise self-government.'”
The filing quotes the U.S. Constitution's elections clause, which says "the times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof."
The filing notes that Republican lawmakers pushed back against the state court's process, trying unsuccessfully to have two researchers involved in the redraw bounced from the effort after plaintiffs in the case revealed they'd reached out to experts plaintiffs hired to analyze Republican-drawn maps.
The court should not allow "a handful of judges" to "outsource the creation of a congressional map to a hastily selected group of Special Masters and their assistants, working behind closed doors and in communication with Plaintiffs’ experts, and with less than a week to do their work," the GOP said in its filing.