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.
Case Documents
Related Media
Judge Orders Remedial Actions in Wake County Redistricting Case
Courts Will Not Consider Unconstitutional Election Map Ruling in Wake County
Redistricting of Wake County Board of Commissioners and Board of Education Ruled Unconstitutional
Wake Voters Sue over New County Commission Districts
Other Related Cases
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
SCSJ and a coalition of civil rights groups called upon the U.S. Supreme Court as amici curiae to affirm that South Carolina’s congressional map is racially gerrymandered, in violation of the 14th Amendment.
Read More Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP
Abbott v. Perez
Southern Coalition for Social Justice challenged Texas’s congressional and state house redistricting after the 2010 census on behalf of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP and five individuals. In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged Texas's 2011 and 2013 maps were intentionally racially discriminatory in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.
Read More Abbott v. Perez
Petteway v. Galveston County
SCSJ and co-counsel filed this challenge to the Galveston County Commissioners' 2021 precinct map in April 2022 on behalf of three local NAACP branches, the local Galveston LULAC Council 151, and three Black and Latino voters.
Read More Petteway v. Galveston County