Source: Jordan WIlkie, CAROLINA PUBLIC PRESS, 8/24/21


Every state in the country is redrawing political maps based on new data from the 2020 census, and many eyes across the nation are focused on North Carolina.

The Tar Heel State has been a hot spot for legal fights over political maps since the 1990s, battles that have accelerated since 2011, when Republicans took control of the state legislature and used that newfound power to draw new political maps from the 2010 census in their own favor. 

Unlike previous gerrymandering efforts, maps drawn over the last decade applied sophisticated software to narrowly tailor districts to give maximum advantage to the party in power.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled these maps were unconstitutional because they racially gerrymandered, meaning the maps were drawn in a way to give Black people less political power. The legislature, overseen by federal courts, redrew those maps in 2016, but these again faced a legal challenge.

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