Thread by @lekhashupeck

In particular, Defendants have not shown that their use of race
was reasonably necessary to remedy a violation of Section 2 of
the VRA...

since they have not demonstrated that any challenged
district was drawn with a strong basis in evidence that the
“majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . .
usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.”
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 51 (1986).

i.e. The court cites Gingles specifically, and DOES NOT say that there is no legitimate use of race in drawing districts, or that there is no racially polarized voting in North Carolina.

They simply say "You didn't do the work,"

IMO #NCGA wanted to use the VRA as an excuse to pack Black voters in order to disenfranchise them, but couldn't be bothered to do the substantive analysis that would actually be needed to show that all those majority Black districts were necessary.

These judges weren't trying to undermine the VRA at all, or say that it somehow isn't necessary in North Carolina - they were saying you can't just indiscriminately pack Black voters and say you're doing it to help them, by using the VRA as a shield.

Now, the really (excuse my language) FUCKED UP part of this is that it looks like the chairs of the Redistricting committees are now trying to twist this ruling and tell us that it says that there's no racially polarized voting in North Carolina at all.

Instead of taking away the real lesson - stop disenfranchising Black voters - legislative leadership has tried to use it to say that Black voters are not disenfranchised at all in the first place.

I quoted that passage for you. I'm attaching screenshots of it and the next couple of paragraphs to this tweet. If you want to read the full opinion, it is here: brennancenter.org/sites/default/…

It's funny - I've been hearing the chairs of the redistricting committees say for weeks that a federal court has said there's no racially polarized voting in NC, and therefore no need to consider race.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what case they were referring to.

It was only today that I realized that the reason I couldn't identify what case they were talking about is because there isn't one. Not really. Because what they've done is concocted such a twisted reading of Covington that it is completely unrecognizable.

So now I've identified it - that's the sick game they're playing, the utterly bad faith you-couldn't-get-there-with-even-zero-reading-comprehension interpretation that they're spinning to justify disenfranchising Black voters yet again.