A federal judge this week upheld the North Carolina Senate map, siding with Republicans who had been accused of intentionally diluting the voting power of Black Democrats in the northeastern part of the state.
U.S. District Court Judge James Dever, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote that the voters in Northeastern North Carolina who brought the complaint hadn’t proved that Black voters were being discriminated against due to their race and that the situation didn’t merit redrawing the map to create a majority-Black state Senate district.
“This case does not involve the General Assembly engaging in race-based districting or the odious practice of sorting voters based on race,” Dever wrote. “Indeed, the record demonstrates that when the General Assembly drew the maps… the General Assembly did not have racial data in the computer.”
The federal judge’s decision deals a blow to Democrats’ efforts to break the GOP supermajority in the chamber next year, as they did in the state House last year.
Rep. Rodney Pierce, a Halifax County Democrat and plaintiff in the case, declined to comment on the court’s decision but filed an appeal with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
GOP Senate leader Phil Berger praised the judge’s decision, writing on X that the Voting Rights Act “can’t be weaponized to make up for the shortcomings of the Democratic Party.”
Presently, the likeliest pickup for Democrats is the 11th District seat currently held by Republican Sen. Lisa Stone Barnes of Nash County, who won in 2024 by 2.6 percentage points—the narrowest victory for a state Senate Republican.
Separately, Berger’s openness to redrawing North Carolina’s congressional map got national attention in the last week. State lawmakers could return to vote on a new U.S. House map as early as October 20, though there’s minimal upside to another round of redistricting for Republicans.
Plus, Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall haven’t exactly been seeing eye to eye lately. “We have, I think, the maps we need in order for North Carolinians to vote on this time around,” Hall said on a conservative podcast in August.
