Judge Throws Out Maryland Congressional Map, in Blow to Democrats

A Maryland choose dominated on Friday that Democrats within the state had drawn an “excessive gerrymander” and threw out the state’s new congressional map, the primary time this redistricting cycle that districts drawn by Democrats have been defeated in courtroom.

The ruling by Senior Choose Lynne A. Battaglia of the Circuit Courtroom for Anne Arundel County discovered that the map drawn by Democrats had “constitutional failings” and ignored necessities of specializing in “compactness” and holding related communities collectively in drawing their map.

The congressional map drawn by Democrats within the state would have most definitely assured them at the very least seven of the state’s eight Home seats, or 87 p.c of the seats. President Biden carried Maryland with 65 p.c of the vote in 2020.

The workplace of Brian Frosh, the Democratic lawyer normal of Maryland, stated that it was reviewing the choice, and that it had not but determined whether or not to attraction it.

Truthful Maps Maryland, a Republican-aligned group that had supported the problem to the state’s districts, praised the choice in a press release.

“To name this an enormous deal could be the understatement of the century,” stated Doug Mayer, a spokesman for the group. “Choose Battaglia’s ruling confirms what we now have all identified for years — Maryland is floor zero for gerrymandering, our districts and political actuality reek of it, and there’s plentiful proof that it’s occurring.”

He added, “Marylanders have been preventing without cost and truthful elections for many years, and for the primary time in our state’s shameful historical past of gerrymandering, we’re on the precipice of ending it.”

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