Redistricting in North Carolina has been a controversial topic due to allegations and admissions of gerrymandering.
Constitutional requirements
The Constitution of North Carolina states:
Article 1, Section 10: "All elections shall be free".
Article II, Section 3: The Senators shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators among those districts, subject to the following requirements: (1) Each Senator shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Senator represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Senators apportioned to that district; (2) Each senate district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a senate district; (4) When established, the senate districts and the apportionment of Senators shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
Article II, Section 4: The Representatives shall be elected from districts. The General Assembly, at the first regular session convening after the return of every decennial census of population taken by order of Congress, shall revise the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives among those districts, subject to the following requirements: (1) Each Representative shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Representative represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Representatives apportioned to that district; (2) Each representative district shall at all times consist of contiguous territory; (3) No county shall be divided in the formation of a representative district; (4) When established, the representative districts and the apportionment of Representatives shall remain unaltered until the return of another decennial census of population taken by order of Congress.
Prior to 2010
The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that partisan gerrymandering violates the Equal Protection Clause and is a justiciable matter. However, the court found it difficult to apply the precedent in other cases. Only in one subsequent case, Republican Party of North Carolina v. Martin (1992), did a lower court strike down a redistricting plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds.
Instead, the Supreme Court found it easier to rule on racial gerrymanders under existing federal law. While the Equal Protection Clause, along with Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, prohibit jurisdictions from gerrymandering electoral districts to dilute the votes of racial groups, the Supreme Court has held that in some instances, the Equal Protection Clause prevents jurisdictions from drawing district lines to favor racial groups. The Supreme Court first recognized these "affirmative racial gerrymandering" claims in Shaw v. Reno (Shaw I) (1993), holding that plaintiffs "may state a claim by alleging that [redistricting] legislation, though race neutral on its face, rationally cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to separate voters into different districts on the basis of race, and that the separation lacks sufficient justification". The Supreme Court reasoned that these claims were cognizable because relying on race in redistricting "reinforces racial stereotypes and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group rather than their constituency as a whole". Later opinions characterized the type of unconstitutional harm created by racial gerrymandering as an "expressive harm", which law professor Richard Pildes and political scientist Richard Neimi have described as a harm "that results from the idea or attitudes expressed through a governmental action."
2010–2019
Following the Republican win of supermajorities in both houses of the General Assembly in the November 2010 elections, the Republican leadership set out to protect their wins by redrawing both legislative and congressional maps in their favor. This resulted in subsequent elections in which Republicans won a disproportionate number of seats, compared to the percentage of votes received by Republicans.