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North Carolina's Republican-controlled Senate approved a redrawn congressional map Tuesday, potentially clearing the way for an extra GOP seat in the U.S. House.
The state House, which also has a Republican majority, will likely vote to pass the map next week. North Carolina is the latest state to heed President Donald Trump's mid-decade redistricting mandate in hopes of mitigating the risk of GOP losses in next year’s midterm elections.
"We are doing everything we can to protect President Trump’s agenda, which means safeguarding Republican control of Congress," said North Carolina Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Republican from Rockingham.
Democratic Gov. Josh Stein denounced the Republicans’ move. “They’re trying to decide for the voters who their congressperson is," Stein said Monday, ahead of the vote. "In this representative democracy, the people choose their representatives — it should not be the representatives choosing their people.”
Redistricting typically happens at the beginning of each decade after a new census, but Texas Republicans redrew their state's electoral map much earlier, in August. In response, California redrew its own map to offset Texas' GOP gains, kicking off a redistricting battle between Republican and Democratic lawmakers across the country. (Californians will vote on the new map next month.)
Other states have redrawn their maps since then, including Missouri and Indiana, both of which have Republican-controlled legislatures.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, litigation is still pending in 10 cases involving redrawn congressional maps. Many of these lawsuits argue that the maps are racially discriminatory and violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The U.S. Supreme Court is also considering a case involving a court-ordered redrawn congressional map in Louisiana, which could determine what role race may legally play in the redistricting process.