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U.S. Supreme Court Again Orders Review Of NC Districts

N.C. Congressional map shows the former 12th District that stretched from Guilford to Mecklenburg County. Credit: U.S. Supreme Court

For the second time in two years, the U.S. Supreme Court has told North Carolina's highest court to review the state's political maps.

Last week a majority of justices found racial gerrymandering in two Congressional districts. One of them was the former 12th district that included parts of Greensboro and High Point.

The state court had upheld the maps twice since the Republican-led General Assembly drew them in 2011, most recently two years ago. This time, the balance of the state Supreme Court will be different. It shifted after Democratic-affiliated Mike Morgan defeated conservative incumbent Bob Edmunds in last year's election.

State mapmakers redrew the Congressional districts last year following a three-judge federal panel ruling that also found them to be racially gerrymandered.

It's not immediately clear what the court's order means for the state's legislative districts, which have also been the subject of court battles for years.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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