Up & Coming Weekly

January 03, 2023

Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.

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WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM JANUARY 4 - 10, 2023 UCW 5 I've been on the redistricting beat a long time. Back in the early 1990s, I wrote numerous articles criticizing the collaboration among Republican and NAACP activists to maximize the number of Black-majority districts. After the egregious Democratic ger- rymander of 2001, I cheered on the lawsuit that ultimately became the Stephenson v. Bartlett case, which overturned the gerrymander and enforced the state constitution's rule against unnecessarily splitting coun- ties in legislative maps. Later I endorsed and helped orga- nize multiple coalitions to reform the process by amending North Carolina's constitution. Just as the whole-county provision had acted as a check on gerrymandering in Stephenson, we argued that adding other redistricting criteria such as compactness to the constitution could erect additional guardrails against abuses. What I never believed is that North Carolina's constitution already con- tained redistricting rules discover- able in such clauses as "all elections shall be free" and "no person shall be denied equal protection of the laws." We had, after all, spent many years seeking to persuade state lawmakers to place a redistricting-reform amend- ment on the ballot precisely because the current state constitution did not contain the safeguards in question. Other reformers disagreed. More to the point, Republicans had won leg- islative majorities in 2010 — running in districts drawn by the other party, mind you — while a few years later Democrats regained a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court. State and national Democrats decided they couldn't pass up the opportunity to sue. eir federal litigation ultimately hit a dead end. e U.S. Supreme Court declared that similarly vague language in the federal constitution did not empower the federal judiciary to police partisan gerrymandering or supplant the role of state legislatures in drawing congressional maps. eir litigation in the state courts went a different direction, however. Back in February, the four Democrats on the state's highest court ruled in Harper v. Hall that the North Carolina constitution's general protections of free elections, equal protection, free speech, and free assembly did, in fact, constitute legitimate grounds for state courts to judge the fairness of districts drawn by the General Assembly — and even for judges to use their own consultants and resources to draw the maps instead. e practical effect was that the 2022 elections for General Assembly and U.S. House of Representatives were held within districts that were either drawn by court-appointed "spe- cial masters" or by legislators subject to a court order. Republicans still won a supermajority in the state senate and came within a seat of winning one in the state house. Both the Democratic plaintiffs and Republican defendants were dissatis- fied. Both appealed separate elements of the decision. On Dec. 16, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued an- other decision in Harper v. Hall. Once again by a party-line vote, Democratic justices affirmed their original find- ings and even threw out the senate districts we just used in the election, ordering the legislature to try again in 2023. To my mind, the folly of the Democrats' original decision is clearly exposed. By liberally construing the state constitution to prohibit what its text clearly does not, and then refusing to spell out specific legal and numeri- cal criteria for lawmakers to follow, the Democratic justices have created an intolerable mess. Whatever happens next year, the de- fendants are likely to appeal to a new North Carolina Supreme Court with an originalist majority. e Harper v. Hall standard "is a dead man walking," as my John Locke Foundation col- league Andy Jackson predicts. at doesn't mean redistricting reform itself is dead. It just means we'll have to do it the proper way: by amending the state constitution. OPINION Democratic Court blew it on redistricting by JOHN HOOD JOHN HOOD, Board Member, John Locke Foundation. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910-484-6200 www.faytechcc.edu – (910) 678-8400 – admissionscounselors@faytechcc.edu • Business • Computer Information Technology • Engineering • Healthcare • Human Service Technology • Media & Fine Arts • Public Safety • Skilled Trades • University Transfer Over 280 programs to choose from in these major program areas: Spring classes begin January 9! >>> APPLY NOW! Better skills – Better jobs – Better pay!

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