Supreme Court: North Carolina can hold off on redistricting

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued a stay of a lower-court ruling that would have forced North Carolina lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional districts. Lawyers for North Carolina Republican legislators argued that an order in federal court last week declaring the state congressional map an illegal partisan gerrymander should be blocked until the Supreme Court considered similar cases from Wisconsin and Maryland. The high court has never declared that the inherently political process of redistricting can be too partisan. The state redrew its congressional lines in 2016 after another panel of judges ruled two majority African-American districts were racially gerrymandered. The stay means the case will probably remain unresolved until summer or later and the current congressional boundaries will likely hold through November’s midterm elections. Candidate filing begins next month for the May primaries. Republican attorneys had argued that requiring a new map, the third since 2011, would have confused voters and candidates.