Court determines 2021 reapportionment diluted Republican votes but state’s congressional districts remain competitive
A New Mexico 9th Judicial District judge has upheld the state’s post-2020 Census reapportionment, dismissing claims by the Republican Party of New Mexico that the Democrat-led state legislature’s congressional map is a “racial gerrymander” that violates the state’s Constitution.
The 14-page ruling issued Oct. 6 will be challenged by the state’s GOP, but it virtually ensures New Mexico’s three congressional districts—all represented by Democrats—will remain as they are for the 2024 elections.
The New Mexico congressional map lawsuit is one of at least a dozen underway in state and federal courts across the country, including a South Carolina case, Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, to be heard before the United States Supreme Court on Oct. 11.
How and where those court decisions shake out could have significant repercussions in Congress, potentially making it structurally more difficult for Republicans to expand or sustain their current 222–212 U.S. House majority in 2024’s elections.
The New Mexico decision follows an Oct. 5 ruling by a three-judge U.S. Northern District of Alabama panel that creates a new Alabama congressional map containing one majority-black district and another near-black-majority district presumptively favoring Democrats. Right now, the state’s seven-member congressional delegation consists of six Republicans and one Democrat.
Alabama’s new map will also likely be in place for the 2024 elections, even if state GOP officials continue challenging Allen v. Milligan, which the United States Supreme Court voted 5–4 on June 8 to kick back to the same circuit court panel that initially rejected the map and issued the Oct. 5 ruling.
The Republican Party of New Mexico, state Sen. David Gallegos (R-Eunice), several individual voters, and Roswell Mayor Timothy Jennings, a former Democrat state senator still registered with the party, filed the lawsuit, Republican Party of N.M. v. Toulouse Oliver, on Jan. 21, 2022.
The complaint alleged the congressional map redrawn by the state legislature during a 2021 special session and signed into law by Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was done “in contravention of traditional redistricting principles … to accomplish a political gerrymander that unconstitutionally dilutes the votes of residents of southeastern New Mexico in order to achieve partisan advantage.”
By John Haughey
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