By Jacob Burg
A three-judge panel ruled on Nov. 23 that North Carolina can move forward with its redrawn congressional map that aims to give the GOP an extra seat in the House in the midterm elections.
The unanimous decision denied a request for an injunction to block the state from using the map in the 2026 elections.
The map, drawn by North Carolina’s Republican-led General Assembly, targets the seat held by Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.), whose district includes more than 20 counties in the state’s northeast region.
Davis, who is African-American, represents the 1st District, which has had a black representative in Congress for more than three decades.
The injunction requests followed a mid-November hearing in Winston-Salem, held a day before the same three-judge panel upheld other House districts that the General Assembly had redrawn and enacted in 2023.
Those maps were used in the 2024 elections and helped the GOP net three additional seats in Congress.
The North Carolina NAACP and Common Cause alleged that the 2023 and 2025 redrawn maps amounted to voter dilution and racial discrimination in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.
The redistricting showdown kicked off earlier this year when Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature convened a special session to redraw the state’s congressional districts mid-cycle so the GOP could net five additional seats in the 2026 midterm elections.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and the state’s Democratic-led legislature retaliated against Texas’s redistricting, which was backed by President Donald Trump, by redrawing maps and putting them before voters as a ballot initiative in this year’s election, which succeeded.
On Nov. 18, a three-judge panel in Texas ruled that Texas may not use the new map because “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
Texas appealed the ruling three days later, and the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency stay, temporarily blocking the ruling so justices have more time to consider the case.
In response to Thursday’s ruling in North Carolina, state Republican Senate leader Phil Berger said the decision “thwarts the radical left’s latest attempt to circumvent the will of the people” in a state where voters elected Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
“As Democrat-run states like California do everything in their power to undermine President Trump’s administration and agenda, North Carolina Republicans went to work to protect the America First Agenda,” Berger said in a statement.
Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, criticized the ruling.
“This ruling gives blessing to what will be the most gerrymandered congressional map in state history, a map that intentionally retaliates against voters in eastern North Carolina for supporting a candidate not preferred by the majority party,” Phillips said in a statement.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
