Case Summary
After the North Carolina General Assembly passed a local bill in 2013 redistricting the Wake County Board of Education and Board of County Commissioners, Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed two lawsuits in federal court on behalf of the Raleigh Wake Citizens Association and 14 individual voters challenging the plan as violated the one-person, one-vote guarantee under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Fourth Circuit found the challenged plans to be unconstitutional, and ordered that a remedy be put in place by the 2016 general election. In November 2016, the nine members of the School Board were elected under the districts that existed before the unconstitutional local bill was enacted in 2013. The three members of the seven-member Board of County Commissioners who were up for election in 2016 were elected to two-year terms pursuant to the prior at-large plan. After the General Assembly did not develop a remedial plan during the 2017 session, SCSJ negotiated a consent decree with the Defendant extending use of the prior plan.
Why it's Important
The districts approved by the General Assembly on April 2, 2015, failed two constitutional tests: first, violating the principle of one-person, one-vote due to significant population disparities aimed at partisan advantage and rural-suburban favoritism; second, creating an irregularly shaped majority-Black district, District 4, which allegedly constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander by splitting ten precincts.
