Maryland judge throws out Democratic-backed congressional map
By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) – A Maryland choose on Friday threw out the state’s new Democratic-backed congressional map, ruling the district strains overwhelmingly favored the occasion in violation of the state structure, and ordered lawmakers to attract a brand new plan.
The choice was a blow to Democrats, who’re already going through an uphill battle to carry their razor-thin majority within the U.S. Home of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.
The map, which handed virtually solely alongside occasion strains in Maryland’s Democratic-controlled legislature final December, gave Democrats seven secure seats whereas endangering the state’s lone Republican congressmember, Consultant Andy Harris, by redrawing his district’s borders.
Anne Arundel County Senior Choose Lynne Battaglia agreed with Republican arguments that the map violated the state structure’s equal safety assure, amongst different provisions, by diluting Republican voters’ electoral energy.
“The 2021 plan is an outlier and a product of utmost partisan gerrymandering,” she wrote in a 94-page opinion.
She gave the legislature till Wednesday to attract a brand new map. The state’s excessive courtroom has already moved the first election from June 28 to July 19 as a part of separate litigation by Republicans difficult the legality of the state’s new legislative maps.
A spokesperson for the workplace of state Lawyer Basic Brian Frosh, a Democrat, mentioned it was reviewing the choice and had not but decided whether or not it will enchantment.
Underneath the U.S. Structure, states should redraw their congressional districts each 10 years primarily based on inhabitants adjustments. In most states, lawmakers oversee redistricting, which gives a possibility to control maps for partisan benefit, a follow referred to as gerrymandering.
Friday’s choice is the newest in a sequence of rulings from state courts difficult lawmakers’ unfettered authority to attract partisan maps, after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom mentioned in 2019 that federal courts couldn’t adjudicate such disputes.
In contrast to in Maryland, Democrats have principally been the beneficiaries in courtroom instances this cycle. Judges in Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have blocked Republican efforts to put in extra favorable congressional maps in these states.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Enhancing by Aurora Ellis)
