North Carolina Becomes Latest Victim in Nationwide Redistricting Push
Demonstrators protesting outside the North Carolina State Capitol on Oct 21st, 2025. Source: Associated Press.
On October 22nd, 2025, North Carolina became the latest state to enter the mid-decade redistricting wars. The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a new Congressional map, shifting the historically Democratic and majority African-American 1st Congressional District, represented by Don Davis, into a more republican leaning configuration. This new map has the aim of shifting the swing state’s congressional delegation from 10-4 to an 11-3 Republican advantage.
North Carolina Senate President pro-tempore Phil Berger said, “This new map respects the will of the North Carolina voters who sent President Trump to the White House three times.”
However, this newly enacted map has brought broad criticism from many groups who see it as a partisan power grab and diluting voting power away from the historically African-American population in Northeastern North Carolina. While partisan gerrymandering is considered legal in North Carolina per the state Supreme Court’s ruling in 2023, federal protections exist for racial gerrymandering within Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Republican legislators have sought to get ahead of potential lawsuits by blatantly admitting that the map was redrawn for partisan purposes. However, this hasn’t stopped advocacy groups from bringing lawsuits to the table.
Lawyers with the non-profit organization Forward Justice are bringing a lawsuit against the General Assembly for diluting black representation in the 1st district. Reverend William Barber, founder of a non-profit, Repairers of the Breach, said that, “racial intent must be judged by a policy’s consequences, not just the language used to justify it.” History, however, suggests the case is likely not to get far.
North Carolina voters brought previous lawsuits in response to the gerrymandered congressional map in 2024. Yet, these lawsuits have either been dismissed or failed to gain traction. The last successful challenge towards overturning North Carolina’s maps as a partisan gerrymander happened in 2021 when the Democrats held a 4-3 seat majority on the state supreme court. Back then, a Republican proposed map with a 10-4 split was struck down and replaced with a court-ordered map that led to a 7-7 split in the 2022 midterm elections. The 2022 cycle was, however, only a brief taste of fair maps for North Carolina voters.
North Carolina is ground-zero for political fights surrounding partisan gerrymandering. Normally, district maps are only updated once every ten years to correspond with updated census numbers. Yet, in the past decade alone, North Carolina has passed seven different congressional maps and utilized four unique maps, with a fifth slated to be used in next year’s midterm elections. These constant shifts erode public trust in elections and deny the people of North Carolina steady representation in Congress.
What is happening in North Carolina is part of a larger, and deeply concerning proliferation of mid-decade redistricting for political gain. What started as a Texas map redraw to gain Republicans up to five seats in Congress has exploded into an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting war. President Trump has increasingly put pressure on state legislators in states such as Missouri, Indiana, Florida, and now North Carolina to redraw Congressional maps. Meanwhile, Democratic led states have promised retaliation including California, which just recently passed Proposition 50 to net Democrats up to five seats to counter Texas.
A mid-decade redistricting arms race of this scale is unprecedented. Districts are only mandated to be redrawn every decade and mid-decade redistricting has historically only been reserved for court-ordered map redraws. The recent push for redrawing district boundaries in between census cycles is clearly a political move designed to tip the balance of power in Congress towards one party. Large swaths of voters in a given state’s political minority are denied any representation in Congress. Partisan gerrymandering at this scale is poison for our democracy that promised a fair and competitive struggle for Congressional control. Politicians on both sides of the aisle must strive for the pursuit of fair districts together.
Unfortunately, it appears both Democratic and Republican legislators are in a “race to the bottom”to maximize political power in the House of Representatives. The current trend is not sustainable for democracy. Fortunately, some hope for national policy addressing this unsettling trend does exist. Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), who himself appears likely to become a victim of this fight, recently introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting. But even this piece of legislation would do little to quell the temptation of partisan gerrymandering as most politicians, unaffected by gerrymandering in “safe” districts in addition to party leadership, continue to push to increase their caucus in Washington.
The only way to stop this proliferation of partisan gerrymandering is to take the power away from the hands of the legislators themselves. Even the courts no longer have federal jurisdiction over partisan gerrymandering following the Moore v. Harper ruling. A truly democratic process would be to bestow the power of mapmaking to the voters themselves through transparent citizen-led commissions. It grants power directly to the citizens and provides an avenue for all political groups, majority or minority, to have a voice in the process. Many states have delegated power to independent commissions through referendums.
Moments like these have tested our form of democracy. Only when we eliminate the practice of partisan gerrymandering can we truly have free and fair elections for all.