Republican legislators hit back at a group suing them over gerrymandering claims Monday, accusing the other side's attorneys of "ongoing misconduct" and asking a Wake County judicial panel to consider booting them from the case.
Attorneys for Common Cause, in their own court filing earlier this month, accused legislators of lying to a federal court and the public in 2017 about how state election maps were drawn and how far along that process was, apparently in an effort to avoid a court-ordered special election that might have elected more Democrats
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The group said it found nearly complete maps among a now-deceased Republican mapmaker's computer files, as well as racial data that legislators said they didn't consult in drawing North Carolina's latest election maps. Common Cause said dates on the maps show legislators misled the court about how much time they'd need to draw new ones.
State legislators pushed back against the accusations last week, but their formal legal response came late Monday afternoon.
"One might expect that, with such a bald allegation of misconduct by elected leaders, plaintiffs would have some strong support for it, some smoking gun, or admission," attorneys for state Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, and others involved in the case said in their filing. "But, in fact, they have nothing of the sort."
The brief, part of an ongoing case in Wake County Superior Court, says Lewis and other legislative defendants in the now-concluded federal case didn't actually deny the existence of the maps. Instead, the brief quotes the old case file, saying Lewis stipulated that he had not yet assigned consultant Thomas Hofeller to make maps and that he didn't know whether Hofeller had done so. Attorneys also pointed to legislative hearings where Lewis was asked about pre-existing maps and said there were "none that I know of."
The attorneys also pointed to the court's own findings in that case and an order that concluded Lewis and his co-defendants hadn't produced "any evidence that they have not begun to evaluate what the revised districts might look like."
"The notion that the Covington court believed that there was an ironclad, affirmative assertion that Dr. Hofeller had not engaged in map-drawing contradicts what that court itself said on the matter. ..." Monday's brief states. "There is a difference between a career map-drawer tinkering on a computer and a legislature deliberating over a redistricting plan with the intent of enacting one into law."
Lewis' attorneys also pushed back against the idea that maps found on Hofeller's computers, turned over to Common Cause's legal team by his estranged daughter after he died, were nearly identical to maps the legislature eventually approved.
"Plaintiffs' starting numbers are wrong, and many districts were the same in Dr. Hofeller's drafts and the enacted plans because those districts were unaffected in (the federal case)," the GOP legal team said. "Thus plaintiffs have zero support – none – for their assertion."
Common Cause did not include its actual evidence in its filing earlier this month, making it impossible to verify what the draft maps look like. The group said proof from the Hofeller files would come out at trial, and the two sides are sparring over just what can be done with the trove of documents found on hard drives and memory sticks.
Hofeller's daughter gave those files to Common Cause's attorneys in the Wake County case, but the files have now figured in two separate federal cases: The racial gerrymandering lawsuit Common Cause accused legislators of lying in, which was titled Covington v. North Carolina, and a case pending in Washington, D.C., over the addition of a citizenship question to the next U.S. census.
The files indicate Hofeller played an important role in adding that question to the census by producing an analysis that found it would help draw districts "advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites" and helping the Justice Department draft a letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act.
Hofeller was a national Republican figure, and Common Cause gave The New York Times advance notice on both the census issue and the recent Covington accusations. Legislative leaders in North Carolina put out a press release Monday complaining, among other things, that Common Cause's brief last week was shared with The Times before it was filed, leading to initial coverage without their side of the story.
Turnabout was apparently fair play: GOP leadership timed their release to hit North Carolina reporter's inboxes before their brief was filed with the court.
Common Cause North Carolina Executive Director Bob Phillips said the group's attorneys were reviewing the filing Monday evening.