State courts shake up Pennsylvania, North Carolina with new House lines

Judges in Pennsylvania and North Carolina handed down new congressional maps on Wednesday that will affect the layout of 31 congressional seats, finalizing district lines in one state and inching closer to resolution in the other.

In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court adopted a map that made few changes to the current districts but erased one Republican-held seat, while in North Carolina, a panel of judges adopted a map drawn by a special master that would likely split the congressional delegation evenly, a big boost for Democrats, who currently hold five out of 13 seats.

The North Carolina order would make bigger changes to the makeup of the House, but it may not be enacted: Republican lawmakers in North Carolina quickly announced they’d appeal the new maps to the state Supreme Court. If left in place, both maps look set to draw a pair of GOP congressmen into the same district in each state, kicking off expensive primary fights.

Across the country, state high courts have played a massive role in shaping the contours of the House map for the next decade. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2019 punted the issue of partisan gerrymandering out of federal judges' hands into state courts, and Democrats embarked on a concerted campaign to gain control of those bodies ahead of redistricting.

Republicans seethed at the rulings, blaming them on the Democratic effort helmed by former Attorney General Eric Holder and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

"These are nothing but partisan rubber stamps today," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christe, a co-chair of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said on a call with reporters. "And the game is far from over."

And Christie beseeched his party to course correct its efforts on state courts.

"We allowed Barack Obama and Eric Holder to outmaneuver the Republican committees in those states and the RNC," he said. "And we can't take for granted these these Supreme Court elections and what impact they can have on the maps that are going to rule the country from a congressional perspective for the next decade."

In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court’s decision solidifies the maps, making few changes to how they currently stand. But the map still could prove to be a boon to Republicans’ quest for the majority in 2022 because of the number of closely divided battleground districts. The GOP could ultimately win 11 of the state’s 17 districts in the current political environment.

Unlike the GOP-drawn Pennsylvania map in place for most of the last decade, which saw few seats change party control, this one will swing with the political winds. There are six deep-blue seats, six ruby-red ones and five potentially competitive seats. Two are held by GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Scott Perry, another two are held by Democratic Reps. Susan Wild and Matt Cartwright, and a fifth swing district is the open Pittsburgh-area seat that Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb is vacating to run for Senate.

That configuration brings high risk — and high reward — for both parties. In a good year for Democrats that means they could also win 11 districts.

Democrats hailed the map as a "a substantial win for Pennsylvanians" and an improvement over the maps they ran on for much of the past decade.

"Republican legislators again arrogantly passed a gerrymandered map, but this time they were halted in their tracks," Holder, who leads the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement.

But the political environment looming over the midterms spells danger for Democrats in 2022. They will be saddled with President Joe Biden’s sagging approval ratings. The biggest loser is Wild, who saw her northern Pennsylvania district swing from one Biden won by 5 points in 2020 to one former President Donald Trump carried by less than 1 point, according to a POLITICO analysis of the new maps.

In that same region, Cartwright holds a seat that Trump carried by 3 points. Both will remain top GOP targets. Lamb’s seat in southwestern Pennsylvania becomes a little easier for Democrats; Biden’s victory margin there grew from 3 points to 6 points.

Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in the state is still Fitzpatrick’s Philadelphia-area seat, which Biden would have carried by 5 points in the new map. Perry, an ultraconservative member of the House Freedom Caucus, remains in a central Pennsylvania district that Trump won by about 4 points.

Pennsylvania also lost a district in reapportionment, and the new map disintegrates GOP Rep. Fred Keller's district, placing him in with GOP Rep. G.T. Thompson. Keller announced Wednesday that he would challenge Republican Rep. Dan Meuser in a neighboring district that includes some of his old turf.

In North Carolina, a panel of judges adopted congressional and legislative maps that were drawn by a court-appointed special master, after the majority-Democratic state Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the maps enacted by the GOP-controlled General Assembly were unconstitutional. But North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore called the court-ordered maps “egregious,” announcing plans to appeal the congressional map to the state Supreme Court.

Should the state Supreme Court take up the appeal, it would be required to, once again, call for a stay on candidate filing for the 2022 primaries, which was scheduled to begin on Thursday.

But leaders at the NRRT, the legal clearinghouse for GOP redistricting cases, said they were not optimistic the Democratic high court would rule in their favor. But they said they saw potential racial gerrymandering claims that could be raised in federal courts because the special master created districts that "doubled or tripled" the population of different racial groups.

"I think it's very likely that this map is approved as is and will be challenged in federal court," NRRT Executive Director Adam Kincaid said.

As it stands, the congressional map, which is increasing to 14 districts after reapportionment, would give Democrats a big boost, likely evening the congressional delegation to seven Democrats and seven Republicans, according to a half-dozen operatives from both parties who analyzed the maps. That would be a significant improvement for Democrats over the current 13-seat split of five Democrats to eight Republicans.

There may be at least one incumbent-versus-incumbent matchup for Republicans under those lines: GOP Reps. Dan Bishop and Richard Hudson appear to be drawn into the same district.

Bishop said in a statement that he was considering running in either the new 8th or the 9th district, but he also floated the possibility of running for "state-wide judicial office" in 2022. "Activist judges have subverted our constitution," he said.

One silver lining that Republicans raised was the fact that North Carolina can redistrict for the next election, according to the court order. And in Ohio, other state where a GOP-drawn was invalidated by a high court, legislators can also engage in mid-decade redistricting.

Both states will have state Supreme Court races on the ballot in November.

"We can change those courts," Christie said, noting that a less partisan court in either place could result in a more favorable map. "These elections to the Supreme Court in North Carolina and Ohio are extraordinarily important as far as we continue to pursue our legal remedies."

Olivia Beavers contributed to this report.