Article snippet: A North Carolina court ruling on Monday ordering the state legislature to redraw congressional district boundaries has Republican members of Congress reconsidering their future in what is almost certain to be a boon for Democrats. The ruling by a panel of three state judges is likely to give Democrats the chance to compete for several more U.S. House districts in North Carolina, where Republicans hold 10 of the 13 seats. Republicans acknowledged Tuesday they could lose at least one, and as many as three, of those seats. The judges, two Democrats and one Republican, ruled that the current district maps, in use since 2016, represented an “extreme partisan gerrymander” that violated a provision in the state constitution guaranteeing “free elections.” The court order bars North Carolina from holding primary elections, scheduled for March 3, under the current boundary lines. At the same time, the judges accepted newly drawn state-level district lines crafted by the legislature after the court ordered last month that they redrawn for similar reasons. The Republican-led legislature did not appeal that ruling, seeing little hope of success before the state Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority. The maps struck down on Monday, drawn after a similar challenge to the way North Carolina crafted its political boundaries following the 2010 Census, gave Republicans the majority of the state’s 13 seats in Congress, even though Republicans won the popular vote there by j... Link to the full article to read more