Search Results for: redistricting

The Christian Ministerial Alliance joined three voters Tuesday to file a lawsuit against the Arkansas State Board of Election Commissioners and Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston over alleged voter dilution arising from Arkansas’ 2021 redistricting plan. The state adopted new legislative redistricting maps for both its Senate and House in 2021. The Legal Defense [...]

The North Carolina Supreme Court Friday held that the court had no authority to strike down the state’s election redistricting map last year. In Harper v. Hall, the majority of the state’s highest court reasoned that the role of the court does not include political disputes that implicate policy issues. Chief Justice Paul Martin Newby explained [...]

The North Carolina Supreme Court Friday granted a petition for rehearing for two settled cases. This decision comes after the election of new justices in 2022, which gave the court a 5-2 Republican majority. The order granting the petition for rehearing relied on North Carolina Rule of Appellate Procedure 31, which allows rehearings of decisions [...]

The North Carolina Supreme Court Friday struck down a gerrymandered legislative district map unconstitutional under the North Carolina state constitution. In August 2021, North Carolina’s General Assembly released its proposed redistricting criteria. The proposed criteria mandated a race-blind approach to redistricting and was criticized for not complying with the Voter Rights Act (VRA). In November [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Moore v. Harper, a case concerning the “independent state legislature” theory in redistricting cases. The case concerns North Carolina’s congressional district map, created by the Republican-controlled legislature last year. North Carolina’s Supreme Court struck down the map as an unconstitutional gerrymander, and Republican lawmakers appealed to [...]

Marisa Wright is a US National Correspondent for JURIST, and a 2L at Harvard Law School.   On Wednesday, December 7, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case involving a fringe legal idea called the independent state legislature theory that poses a threat to the current system of election administration in the [...]

The year is 2024. Congressional maps in the political battleground states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania have been invalidated, and legal fights are ongoing to determine what maps will take their place. State high courts are hesitant to act because their normal powers of judicial review have been curtailed. Entire bodies of election rules, developed [...]

JURIST law student staffers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law are filing dispatches on various aspects of the November 2022 midterm elections in Pennsylvania. Here, Pitt Law 2L David DeNotaris reports on the race between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman for one of the two Pennsylvania seats in the closely-divided US Senate.  While overall [...]

Ahead of the US Election Day on November 8, Republicans and Democrats filed over 100 election-related lawsuits, according to Democracy Docket, a progressive voting rights organization. 138 lawsuits were filed across the US as of Tuesday. Even as Election Day got underway, additional cases extending polling hours were filed and decided in Georgia and Pennsylvania. [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Tuesday denied the City of Jacksonville’s request to stay a redistricting case between the city and civil rights groups. The stay would have allowed the city to use newly drawn voting district maps in upcoming elections. As it stands, a preliminary injunction prevents the maps from [...]