Legislators rebut court challenge to northeastern NC Senate districts

Top lawmakers urge the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals to reject a lawsuit challenging two state Senate districts in northeastern North Carolina. Critics label the districts racially discriminatory.

A trial judge upheld challenged Districts 1 and 2 last September. Voters used the districts in 2024 and are using them again for this year’s legislative contests.

Two black voters — state Rep. Rodney Pierce, D-Halifax, and Moses Matthews — are appealing the trial court decision.  A new brief Monday from state legislative leaders responded to the appeal.

“In the past 30 years, every court to adjudicate a race-related redistricting case in northeastern North Carolina held that majority-Black districts are unnecessary and, when purposefully created, impermissible,” lawmakers’ lawyers wrote. “These districts can upend the county groupings required by the North Carolina Constitution and trigger strict scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution. Not one North Carolina district in decades has satisfied that standard. Dozens have failed.”

“Plaintiffs (the two voters who brought this suit) came to court in 2023 with the improbable view that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) requires the General Assembly to depart from the State’s county-grouping formula to create a race-based majority-Black district in North Carolina’s ‘Black Belt,’” the brief continued. “The decision below is one of four federal rulings this decade to reject this contention.”

The 4th Circuit already affirmed US District Judge James Dever’s decision to reject an injunction blocking the districts before the 2024 election. When the case returned to Dever, “Plaintiffs’ claim failed as predicted,” legislative leaders’ lawyers wrote.

Dever “carefully parsed the record in 125 pages that reveal a broader theme: Plaintiffs are attempting to force a case that simply is not there,” the brief argued. “Across inquiries, the trial judge perceived that Plaintiffs’ experts selected parameters and figures arbitrarily to suit predetermined ends, that demographics do not support a second opportunity district in the region, and that white bloc voting is too muted to be legally significant.”

A three-judge panel addressing the same districts in a separate federal lawsuit “rejected a Section 2 claim challenging the same districts. Four judges cannot have clearly erred,” lawmakers’ lawyers wrote.

A February brief from Pierce and Matthews cited a landmark 1986 US Supreme Court redistricting decision.

“For four decades following Thornburg v. Gingles, … Black voters in northeastern North Carolina’s Black Belt counties were able to elect candidates of their choice to the state Senate,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote. “But North Carolina’s 2023 Senate map cracks this contiguous, majority-Black region across four districts, leaving Black voters in Senate Districts 1 and 2 with no realistic opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. Under well-settled law recently reaffirmed in Allen v. Milligan [in 2023], this violates § 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”

“North Carolina’s long history of voting-related discrimination extends into the modern era,” the court filing argued. “Voting remains intensely polarized along racial lines. Stark racial disparities in education, employment, and other metrics hinder Black political participation. Every recent election cycle has featured racial appeals in political campaigns, often explicit ones. Every relevant Senate factor confirms that cracking Black Belt voters across districts denies them an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.”

The brief accused Dever of “ignoring evidence and systematically rewriting” Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act.

“[T]his case presents a paradigmatic example of vote dilution: a cohesive Black community cracked across districts in a racially polarized electoral environment, with no coherent justification and no opportunity to elect representatives of choice,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued.

The full 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a three-sentence order on Dec. 22 denying the plaintiffs’ request to have the full court hold an initial hearing of the case.

The order indicated that no 4th Circuit judge requested a poll of the court. The poll would have determined whether all eligible judges should hear the case, rather than following the 4th Circuit’s standard procedure of assigning the dispute to a three-judge panel.

Republican Jerry Tillett will face Democrat Melissa Zehner in November in the open District 1 race. In District 2, incumbent Republican Sen. Norman Sanderson faces Democrat Roy Surrett.

Dever upheld the districts on Sept. 30. He rejected the plaintiffs’ arguments that the districts violated federal restrictions against racial gerrymandering.

The state Senate map split northeastern North Carolina’s “Black Belt” of voters, according to the plaintiffs’ initial 4th Circuit filing last fall. “It cracked the Black population across Senate Districts 1 and 2, leaving each with roughly 30% Black voting-age population.”

“Yet the district court denied relief,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote. Dever’s “radical” ruling would “gut” Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Dever found “that plaintiffs have failed to prove their Section 2 claim,” he wrote in his 126-page September order. “Thus, the General Assembly need not use the odious practice of sorting voters based on race or the ‘politics of second best’ to create a majority-black Senate district in northeast North Carolina.”

Dever had conducted a five-day trial in the case in February.

“As the Supreme Court observed in De Grandy 31 years ago, ‘for all the virtues of majority-minority districts as remedial devices, they rely on a quintessentially race-conscious calculus aptly described as the politics of second best,’” he wrote, citing the 1994 court precedent Johnson v. DeGrandy.

The order also referenced the 1986 Gingles precedent. “’If the lesson of Gingles … is that society’s racial and ethnic cleavages sometimes necessitates majority-minority districts to ensure equal political and electoral opportunity, that should not obscure the fact that there are communities in which minority citizens are able to form coalitions with voters from other racial and ethnic groups, having no need to be a majority within a single district in order to elect candidates of their choice,’” Dever wrote.

“The record in this case demonstrates that the communities in northeast North Carolina at issue in this case are such communities,” the judge explained. “Likewise, communities throughout North Carolina are such communities.”

“It is not 1965 or 1982 in North Carolina. It is 2025,” he wrote. “Due in part to societal progress on race and due in part to the VRA, North Carolina is a very different state politically and socially than it was in 1965 or 1982. Black voters in northeast North Carolina and throughout North Carolina have elected candidates of their choice (both white and black) with remarkable frequency and success for decades. Black elected officials in North Carolina are at or near-parity with their share of the statewide population.”

“Legislators rebut court challenge to northeastern NC Senate districts” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.