A WIN on OCTOBER 26th!
NC NAACP files an Amicus Brief (a legal document filed in appellate court cases by non-litigants with a strong interest in the subject matter – it advises the court of relevant, additional information or arguments that the court might wish to consider) to highlight the constitutional inadequacy in the
General Assembly’s treatment of race in constructing a remedial redistricting plan for North Carolina Senate and House seats.
The Appellate Court directed Legislative Defendants to draw remedial districting plans that “remedy the constitutional deficiencies with the Subject Districts.” The subject 2011 districts segregated white and black voters by mechanically adding black voters to election districts in concentrations not authorized or compelled under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thereby “bleaching” adjacent districts of voters of color and frustrating their ability to vote in alliance with a growing, multiracial fusion electorate that bridges racial divides and mitigates the effects of
racially polarized voting.
Following the 2010 United States Census, North Carolina neither gained nor lost congressional seats. In 2010, Republicans won control of both chambers of the state legislature. Consequently, Republicans dominated the 2010 redistricting process. On July 27, 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly approved congressional and state legislative redistricting plans. The Almanac of American Politics described the congressional map as follows:
[Republicans] painstakingly packed Democratic voters into just three of the state’s 13 seats: an African-American majority 1st District covering parts of rural northeastern counties and heavily black neighborhoods in Durham, an almost comically liberal 4th District tying via tentacles the academic haven of Chapel Hill to black neighborhoods in Raleigh and faraway Fayetteville, and an even more tightly packed African-American majority 12th District knifing along the I-85 corridor from Charlotte to Winston-Salem and Greensboro. Republicans drew the other 10 seats at least 10 percentage points more Republican than the national average.