A Maryland judge on Friday tossed out the state's Democrat-drawn congressional map ahead of the 2022 mid-term election, ruling that the map is "an extreme gerrymander" intentionally drawn with "partisanship as a predominant intent" to suppress Republican voters.
Anne Arundel County Senior Judge Lynne A. Battaglia declared Maryland's congressional plan unconstitutional, and ordered the state's General Assembly to develop a new map by March 30, an extremely tight deadline. The Democrat-controlled General Assembly is likely to appeal.
In her 94-page ruling, Battaglia wrote that the evidence presented by experts "yields the conclusion that the 2021 Congressional Plan in Maryland is an 'outlier,' an extreme gerrymander that subordinates constitutional criteria to political considerations." The state's congressional map was marked by "quite non-compact" districts that fracture counties, and it failed to give "due regard" to "the boundaries of political subdivisions."
The Democrat-approved congressional map kept seven safe Democratic seats, and made the lone Republican district more competitive for Democrats.
Battaglia wrote that the plaintiffs "proved that the 2021 Plan was drawn with 'partisanship as a predominant intent, to the exclusion of traditional redistricting criteria,'" and that it was "accomplished by the party in power, to suppress the voices of Republican voters."
Doug Mayer, the spokesman for Fair Maps Maryland, the nonprofit that filed the lawsuit in December, said the judge's ruling confirms that Maryland is "ground zero for gerrymandering."
"To call this a big deal would be the understatement of the century," Mayer wrote in a prepared statement. "Marylanders have been fighting for free and fair elections for decades and for the first time in our state's shameful history of gerrymandering, we are at the precipice of ending it."
Maryland's Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said in a prepared statement that the ruling was a "historic milestone in our fight to clean up the political process in our state."
"This ruling is a monumental victory for every Marylander who cares about protecting our democracy, bringing fairness to our elections, and putting the people back in charge," Hogan said. "It puts in plain view the partisan, secretive, and rigged process that led to the legislature's illegal and unconstitutional maps."
Hogan called on Maryland's General Assembly to immediately approve maps "written with accountability and transparency" by an independent redistricting commission he appointed. Hogan's commission drew up a map that more neatly divides the districts and has fewer districts crossing county lines, the Baltimore Sun reported. The maps from Hogan's commission were rejected by the General Assembly.
The Fair Maps Maryland lawsuit was one of two filed in December charging that the state's congressional map was unconstitutional and based on extreme partisan gerrymandering. The new map was based on Maryland's 2010 map, which critics have called the most gerrymandered in the nation. The Washington Post has called Maryland's third congressional district "the nation's most bizarrely gerrymandered district." In 2017, former Democratic governor Martin O'Malley acknowledged that he had engaged in manipulating maps for political purposes, a practice he said he no longer supports.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave Maryland's congressional map an "F" grade for offering a "significant Democratic advantage."
Battaglia's ruling in Maryland comes on the heels of similar court rulings that tossed out Republican-drawn congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In those states, the GOP's maps were replaced with court-imposed maps. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court allowed those court-imposed maps to stay in place.
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