Hearing set Jan. 8 on injunction for Watauga voting districts

A federal judge has scheduled a Jan. 8 hearing on a proposed injunction to block the North Carolina General Assembly’s local Watauga County voting districts.

The hearing before US District Judge Matthew Orso will take place nearly three weeks after candidate filing has ended for 2026 races.

Plaintiffs led by a group called the Watauga County Voting Rights Task Force and left-of-center activist group Common Cause seek the injunction. It would block the districts from being used in upcoming elections.

Critics filed suit in October to challenge voting districts for county commissioner and school board elections spelled out in Senate Bill 759 in 2023 and Senate Bill 912 in 2024.

“Now, two years after the passage of S.B. 759, and over one year since the passage of S.B. 912, Plaintiffs filed the instant action on October 1, 2025,” legislative lawyers wrote earlier this month in a court filing opposing an injunction. “Plaintiffs waited another month to seek a preliminary injunction on November 3, 2025. Plaintiffs claim that ‘[w]ithout this Court’s timely intervention, the unconstitutional electoral districts enacted in Senate Bill 759 and Senate Bill 912 will remain in effect for the 2026 election cycle.’”

“Thus, Plaintiffs concede, the districts in S.B. 759 were already used in the 2024 elections. This discredits any claim of immediate and irreparable harm or that it is the Court’s responsibility to grant Plaintiffs ‘timely intervention’ years after the allegedly harmful bills were passed,” lawmakers’ court filing added.

“Plaintiffs here seek to alter the status quo by compelling Watauga County to conduct elections with maps that are contrary to duly enacted legislation, which were already used in the 2024 elections, and under which candidates are already able to file for office for the 2026 elections,” legislative leaders’ lawyers wrote. “Put differently, Plaintiffs ask this Court to affirmatively alter the express will of the North Carolina General Assembly, and enjoin districts that were already, and are currently being, used in an election. This request is presumptively ‘disfavored’ and can be justified only by ‘the most extraordinary circumstances.’ Those ‘extraordinary circumstances’ are not present here.”

Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, represents Watauga and eight other counties. He filed both bills changing Watauga’s election maps.

“Senator Hise testified during legislative hearings that S.B. 759 was drawn at the request of constituents in the county who felt like the existing at-large system resulted in a dominance of university/Boone interests over all other county interests, and wanted a voice for their respective interests throughout the county,” legislative lawyers wrote.

“Senator Hise acknowledged that three of the five districts were Republican-leaning at 52-53% but ‘competitive,’ while the two interior districts were not competitive,” the court filing continued. “No one … raised a legal concern over using partisan considerations to draw S.B. 759, because everyone understood at the time that it was a legal exercise of legislative authority.”

US Magistrate Judge David Keesler issued a Dec. 1 order granting state lawmakers’ request to take part in the case as defendants. The suit originally named members of the Watauga County Board of Elections as the only defendants.

Neither the plaintiffs nor the county elections board objected to Republican legislative leaders taking part in the case.

A November court filing explained the plaintiffs’ basis for requesting an injunction.

“Without this Court’s intervention, the voters of Watauga County will, against their clearly expressed will, be forced to use the legislature’s unconstitutional maps to elect members of the County Commission and Board of Education in 2026,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.

“In 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 759 on strict party lines,” according to the original complaint. “That legislation replaced Watauga County’s longstanding system for electing its County Commission from residency districts, and imposed unconstitutional, malapportioned electoral districts with large population deviations.”

The General Assembly approved SB 759 in October 2023 with votes of 28-18 in the Senate and 64-40 in the House. No Democratic legislators voted for the bill.

“The new districts were drawn without meaningful local input,” the complaint continued. “The legislation packed disfavored voters into two overpopulated districts while creating three underpopulated districts for favored voters. The maximum population deviation from largest to smallest district is just under 10%, the threshold at which population deviations become presumptively unconstitutional.”

“The County Commission recognized that the General Assembly’s plan was unnecessary and unpopular, so in June 2024, the Commission used the statutory process available to all North Carolina counties in N.C. General Statutes §§ 153A-58 … to propose a new plan for selecting the County Commission that voters could approve by referendum in the 2024 general election,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers added. “The referendum proposed that three Commission members be elected from electoral districts with much smaller population deviations than those drawn by the General Assembly, and that voters from across the county elect two members at-large.”

“In response to the planned referendum, the General Assembly enacted a second bill just days after the referendum was announced,” the complaint continued. “That bill, Senate Bill 912, barred any referendum approved by Watauga County voters under N.C. General Statute § 153A-61 from taking effect until the 2034 elections, after the next decennial census. The voters of Watauga County would still vote on the referendum approved by the County Commission, but if a majority cast their votes in favor, the referendum would not take effect.”

The General Assembly approved SB 912 in June 2024 with votes of 30-19 in the Senate and 75-39 in the House. Seven House Democrats supported the measure.

“Senate Bill 912 also imposed the General Assembly’s unconstitutional local districts on the Watauga County Board of Education,” the plaintiffs argued. “As it did with the County Commission, the General Assembly replaced the county’s longstanding practice of electing Board of Education members from residency districts with the same malapportioned, unconstitutional electoral districts.”

Watauga voters approved the county commissioners’ plan with 71% of the vote in the November 2024 referendum.

“But the referendum results will have no effect, and the voters of Watauga County will be stuck with unconstitutional districts for their County Commission and Board of Education, unless this Court intervenes,” according to the complaint.

“The General Assembly’s interference in Watauga County local elections violates Plaintiffs’ constitutional rights in several ways,” the plaintiffs argued. “The districts themselves violate the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee to all citizens of a vote on equal grounds. The prohibition on giving effect to resolutions and referenda regarding the manner of selecting the Watauga County Commission violates plaintiffs’ right to equal protection, burdens their right to vote, discriminates against them based on their viewpoint, and amounts to unconstitutional retaliation.”

“Fundamentally, the people of Watauga County have no choice but to petition this Court for urgently needed relief from Defendants’ ongoing violations of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” the complaint added.

“Hearing set Jan. 8 on injunction for Watauga voting districts” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.