Article snippet: A three-judge panel in North Carolina on Monday struck down the state’s Republican-drawn redistricting map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander for the second time this year. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina ruled Republicans had redrawn the map to unconstitutionally favor their party. The panel reached the same conclusion in January, and the case ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court. But the justices in June sent the issue back down to the lower court to re-examine whether the plaintiffs had standing to sue in light of their decision in another partisan gerrymandering case out of Wisconsin. The North Carolina court said the Wisconsin case did not call into question — and, if anything, supported — its previous determination that challengers had standing to assert partisan gerrymandering claims. In writing the majority opinion, which Judge William Earl Britt joined, Judge James Wynn said partisan gerrymanders “raise the specter that the Government may effectively drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace” because they “intentionally seek to entrench a favored party in power and make it difficult – if not impossible – for candidates of parties supporting disfavored viewpoints to prevail.” “That is precisely what the Republican-controlled North Carolina General Assembly sought to do here,” he said. Wynn said legislative defendants drew a plan designed to subordinate the interests of non-Republican vot... Link to the full article to read more