Case Summary
Southern Coalition for Social Justice is challenging North Carolina's 2023 congressional and state legislative voting maps on behalf of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Common Cause, and eight voters (Mitzi Reynolds Turner, Dawn Daly-Mack, Calvin Jones, Joan Chavis, Linda Sutton, and Syene Jasmin), and with co-counsel from Hogan Lovells and NAACP. In their complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of North Carolina, plaintiffs allege all three maps diminish the power of Black voters all across the state in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On March 18, 2024, a three-judge panel consolidated N.C. NAACP v. Berger with the congressional map challenge Williams v. Hall.
On April 8, 2025, a summary judgement was entered in the case dismissing some malapportionment claims but allowing standing for plaintiffs challenged by legislative defendants. The plaintiffs asked the court to take another look at its decision to throw out two of their malapportionment claims, saying new expert evidence shows those claims still deserve to be heard at trial, and that it would be unfair to deny them.
On April 8, 2025, the three-judge panel dismissed Plaintiffs' one-person-one-vote claims (which argued that the maps were improperly malapportioned based on partisanship) but found plaintiffs had satisfied standing to bring their claims and allowed their remaining constitutional and federal law challenges to proceed to trial. Trial began June 16, 2025.
Why it's Important
Legislators imposed these discriminatory districts in an intentionally rushed and deficient process that denied the opportunity for meaningful engagement to minority representatives and citizens, and showed clear disregard for the interests, needs, and desires of North Carolina’s Black voters. This process was calibrated to frustrate judicial review of the maps before the 2024 election. Legislators targeted predominantly Black voting precincts with surgical precision throughout the state in drawing and enacting the 2023 plans – at the expense of traditional redistricting criteria – to achieve preferred district lines that diminish Black voters’ ability to elect candidates of their choice at all levels of government. The effect of these actions is to inequitably reduce the electoral influence of Black lives in North Carolina in violation of the law and the United States Constitution.
Case Documents
Order on Motion to Consolidate
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