A trio of federal judges is gathering in two weeks to decide whether North Carolina lawmakers removed unlawful racial bias from new legislative district maps.
The judges on Wednesday set a hearing for Oct. 12 in Greensboro to decide if the new districts lawmakers drew for themselves still contain illegal and unconstitutional districts.
The three-judge panel last year threw out 19 House districts and nine Senate districts from 2011 after concluding that they were illegally gerrymandered on the basis of race. The judges concluded GOP leaders failed to justify using race as the predominant factor in drawing them. The panel ordered new maps to be drawn this summer.
Lawyers for Republican legislators said the new maps left out the use of racial data when drawing new boundaries.
