Voters Challenge North Carolina GOP’s Mid-Decade Gerrymander That Again Targets Black Districts

North Carolina voters are once again asking a federal court to step in after Republican lawmakers pushed through what they call an “unnecessary, mid-decade redistricting” that dismantles long-standing Black opportunity districts.

The new supplemental complaint submitted Thursday targets Senate Bill 249 — the 2025 congressional map endorsed by President Donald Trump and rushed through the GOP-controlled legislature in less than two days. The complaint argues that the map is not just a repeat of past gerrymandering, but an escalation designed to entrench Republican power while erasing decades of hard-fought Black representation.

“Senate Bill 249 (the ‘2025 Plan’) repeats the constitutional violations of the 2023 Plan — unconstitutionally diluting Black voting strength in the Piedmont Triad and Mecklenburg — and then doubles down on them by further dismantling the First Congressional District (‘CD-1’), a historic Black opportunity district in the northeastern portion of the state,” the complaint reads. “Whatever the General Assembly’s partisan aims, they have — once again — chosen to target Black neighborhoods and communities to achieve them.”

The plaintiffs who previously challenged the 2023 map say this time the stakes are even higher.

Unlike a normal, once-a-decade redistricting after the census, the 2025 redraw was voluntary — no court ordered it, and no population shifts required it. The plaintiffs argue that by doing so, lawmakers violated both the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuit describes the new map as a surgical strike on Black political power.

The filing singles out the dismantling of North Carolina’s First Congressional District, represented for more than thirty years by a Black member of Congress. And the plaintiffs say GOP lawmakers deliberately ignored demographic changes that could have expanded minority representation.

“The General Assembly has gone to great lengths to ensure that the increase in minority population does not translate into any increase in minority electoral opportunity,” the complaint adds. “The 2025 Plan continues North Carolina’s long tradition of enacting redistricting plans that pack and crack minority voters into districts designed to minimize their voting strength.”

Legislators themselves, the filing notes, acknowledged the racial precision of the new lines.

“Senator Kandie Smith explained exactly what was going on: The 2025 Plan was being used as a ‘political weapon’ with Black voters as the ‘target’ because it was ‘designed to fracture historic coalitions’ and ‘diminish voter turnout,’” the plaintiffs emphasize. “Representative Marcia Morey told the Assembly that the 2025 Plan ‘targeted [CD] 1, known as the Eastern Black Belt of North Carolina,’ by ‘dividing and diluting historically Black’ voters.’”

The plaintiffs say the legislature’s use of race as a political weapon crosses a bright legal line and that the new plan’s impact on Black voters was entirely foreseeable.

They are asking the court to declare the 2025 plan unconstitutional, to block the state from using it in any future elections and to order the adoption of a fair, lawful congressional map.

North Carolina has had to redraw its congressional maps at least three times since the 2020 Census due to racial gerrymandering.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump personally urged North Carolina Republicans to redraw the map to help secure an additional GOP seat in Congress ahead of 2026. GOP lawmakers complied, and the bill sailed through both chambers largely along party lines, with no meaningful public input.

The Elias Law Group (ELG) represents the plaintiffs in the case. ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.