Lawsuit targets new NC congressional map. More challenges could be on the way

The first of what’s expected to be multiple legal challenges against North Carolina’s new congressional map has begun, with changes made to a long-running gerrymandering lawsuit.

This week’s redistricting efforts from Republican state lawmakers tweaked a separate map they drew in 2023, which had also faced a lawsuit over allegations of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. Late Thursday, the challengers in the 2023 lawsuit filed new paperwork seeking to re-focus part of their lawsuit on the new version of the map.

The 2023 map had given Republicans 10 safe seats out of the 14 that North Carolina has in the U.S. House of Representatives. The new map eliminated the state’s only competitive district — which had been won in 2024 by Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis — and turned it into a seat that’s expected to elect a Republican in 2026.

Davis told WRAL on Thursday he's frustrated with the map but indicated he's planning to run again. Also Thursday, racial justice advocate and Repairers of the Breach President William Barber II said he plans to unveil his own lawsuit alleging racial gerrymandering.

Republican leaders in North Carolina have said the map is not a racial gerrymander, but they acknowledge it is a partisan gerrymander, which courts have largely said is within state lawmakers’ power to do. And in the ongoing lawsuit, they’ve denied the allegations against them while also arguing that the remedy proposed by the plaintiffs, who say they’re seeking fairer representation, would itself be unconstitutional.

Other challenges could still be coming, even as the existing lawsuit moves forward. Procedurally the next steps of the lawsuit could become complicated, since a trial was already held this summer and both sides have just been waiting on the judge to issue a ruling. But that trial had focused on multiple districts around the state, most of which weren’t touched by the most recent round of redistricting.

It’s part of a national effort by Republicans to gerrymander Democrats out of power as they seek to hang onto their slim majority in the U.S. House in next year’s elections. The leaders of some Democratic states have said they’ll fight back and gerrymander Republicans out of power in response, but none have yet done so. Virginia Democrats said Thursday that they plan to redraw the commonwealth's congressional districts.

Procedurally the next steps of the North Carolina lawsuit could become complicated, since a trial was already held this summer and both sides have just been waiting on the judge to issue a ruling. But that trial had focused on multiple districts around the state, most of which weren’t touched by the most recent round of redistricting.

Earlier this week the judge who oversaw the trial had sent a note to all parties involved — the challengers, the state elections board and Republican state lawmakers — asking what they thought he should do about the fact that the map they had their trial over had now been partially changed.

The challengers are now asking that the claims against all the other districts be allowed to continue as is, but that they should be allowed to change their complaints regarding gerrymandering in eastern North Carolina, since that’s where the new changes occurred.

Republican lawmakers didn’t oppose the request to make new arguments about the new districts, and the judge allowed it, so now that new challenge is moving forward in court.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that’s involved in the lawsuit, said it is hoping the judge will next agree to block the new districts from being used in any elections, at least while litigation remains underway. If that effort — which will be opposed by GOP lawmakers — is successful, then the map might not be able to be used in the 2026 elections.

“Despite overwhelming opposition from their constituents, at the direction of Donald Trump, North Carolina Republicans took an already extreme racial gerrymander even further by splitting apart communities of color that have been kept in the same congressional district for decades,” John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement Friday.