Republicans prevail in racial gerrymandering lawsuit targeting NC Senate maps

Republican state lawmakers didn't break the law when they split up a heavily Black part of the state in redistricting, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

2025-09-30

The judge, Republican appointee James Dever, shot down the racial gerrymandering claims brought by Black voters from Northeastern North Carolina. They claimed the maps were drawn to diminish Black political power, by splitting multiple small, rural and majority-Black counties between two districts — both of which favor Republicans — instead of combining them into a single district that would be more likely to elect a Democrat.

The ruling is a loss for Democrats, who were hoping to have a more favorable map to run on in the 2026 midterms.

"BIG WIN!" Republican state Senate leader Phil Berger wrote on social media after the ruling.

Berger added that the ruling shows that "the [Voting Rights Act] can’t be weaponized to make up for the shortcomings of the Democratic Party. I am glad this latest attempt by partisan interests to undo our fair and legal Senate districts was rejected by the court."

The ruling could still be appealed. Spokespeople for the plaintiffs didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

One of the districts in question stretches hundreds of miles, snaking through rural parts of the state to connect areas just outside Jacksonville to small towns as far-flung as Edenton, on the Albermarle Sound, and Warrenton, on the Virginia border north of Raleigh. The other district stretches from Henrico, just outside Warrenton, to the Outer Banks.

The dividing line between the districts splits in half an area known as the Black Belt — a group of rural, heavily agricultral areas where most residents are Black and vote heavily Democratic.

Dever wrote that there was insufficient evidence that the legislature was purposefully discriminating against Black voters when it cut that swath of majority-Black counties in half. Nor is there evidence, he said, that the white Republican politicians who now represent those areas are ignoring their constituents' needs.

"It is not 1965 or 1982 in North Carolina," Dever wrote. "It is 2025. Due in part to societal progress on race and due in part to the [Voting Rights Act], North Carolina is a very different state politically and socially than it was."

Dever pointed out that 38 of the state's 170 House and Senate members are Black — including one Republican and 37 Democrats — which means that nearly 22% of the state legislature is Black. Census data shows that 20.5% of North Carolina residents are Black and another 6.8% are multiracial.

Education spending takes up more than half of North Carolina's annual state budget, and Dever wrote that the counties in question don't seem to have been let down by their state senators: "For the 2024 North Carolina fiscal year, the Black Belt counties, on average, also received more per-capita state education funds than the majority of North Carolina's other counties," Dever wrote in shooting down the claims of racially motivated gerrymandering.

Looking ahead to 2026

The Black Belt area of northeastern North Carolina could soon be split up again. The area is represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a Black Democrat. Rumors have flown in state and national political circles recently that Berger is considering plans to redraw the state's Congressional map — joining broader "redistricting wars" involving Texas, California and other states — to get rid of Davis. Doing so could make it harder for Democrats to flip the U.S. House House in 2026 and potentially impeach Republican President Donald Trump for a third time.

Berger has denied reports that he's dangled that redistricting possibility to Republican President Donald Trump in exchange for Trump's endorsement in a tough primary challenge Berger is facing next year from his local sheriff, Sam Page.

And looking ahead to other state Senate races, Republicans hold the Senate supermajority by a single seat under the maps that Dever upheld. If the maps had been forced to be withdrawn ahead of 2026, Democrats could likely expect to flip a seat and give Democratic Gov. Josh Stein's veto more power.

But even if the maps remain unchanged, Democrats believe they have a path to breaking the supermajority in 2026. They're planning to raise millions of dollars to take on Sen. Lisa Stone Barnes, a Republican from a prominent farming family who has represented parts the Rocky Mount area for most of the past decade.

Former Democratic lawmaker James Galliard, a Rocky Mount pastor, is attempting to mount a political comeback. The district is competitive: Although it leans slightly Democratic in presidential races, Barnes won it with 51% of the vote in 2024.