Which states could get new congressional maps in 2024?

The New Mexico Republican Party sued over the state’s congressional map last year, arguing that the Democratic-controlled legislature drew a gerrymander that violates the state constitution. Under the old lines, the state had two fairly safe Democratic seats and one relatively GOP-leaning seat. But in 2021, Democrats implemented a new map that made all three seats more competitive, but also gave each seat a Democratic lean. In the case of the GOP-leaning 2nd District, the new lines shifted the seat so that it took in Democratic-leaning and heavily Hispanic parts of Albuquerque. Not coincidentally, Democrats went on to flip the seat by a narrow margin in 2022, giving them control of all three of New Mexico’s congressional districts.

The map’s future will hinge on a three-part test the New Mexico Supreme Court laid out for this case, which asks whether the main reason for drawing a district was to entrench a party’s power by diluting the votes of the opposition party, whether the map substantially diluted the opposition party’s votes and if the defendants have a legitimate, nonpartisan reason for the lines. A lower state court held hearings in late September, so it may be some time before the case is decided.

New York redistricting is … complicated. If the state’s map is redrawn, it could be the most consequential redistricting action of the 2024 cycle and could endanger the reelections of several Republican representatives.

New York’s current congressional map was drawn by a special master after a state court struck down the Democratic legislature’s preferred map, which was severely biased toward Democrats. Democrats filed a lawsuit against the replacement map, arguing that it should only be temporary and that the state’s advisory redistricting commission should be entitled to take another crack at drawing the map. What they don’t mention is that, if the commission fails to pass a map, the Democratic legislature would once again step in and draw one instead — likely another gerrymander.

In July, a state court ruled that the commission should indeed redraw the map, but Republicans quickly appealed the decision. The New York Court of Appeals will hear the case in November. Although that’s the same court that threw out the Democratic gerrymander just last year, the author and swing vote in that 4-3 decision is no longer on the bench.

North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature looks ready to draw lines for a new congressional map this month in the latest twist in the state’s long history of sharp-elbowed partisan battles over redistricting. Prior to the 2022 election, the GOP-led legislature passed two different maps that would’ve been highly favorable to Republicans, but in each case state courts threw out the maps as partisan gerrymanders. The state ended up with a court-drawn map that would only be in effect for the 2022 election, which resulted in a 7-7 split in the state’s congressional delegation.

But in the 2022 election, Republicans won a 5-2 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court, which undid the Democrats’ narrow advantage and significantly altered the state’s legal environment for redistricting. In April, the state Supreme Court overturned a 2022 ruling made by the previous panel that said partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution, opening the door for the legislature to draw an advantageous map for Republicans. Under state law, the governor has no veto power over redistricting measures, so Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper cannot interfere in the GOP-led legislature’s line drawing. If the legislature’s initial mapmaking effort in 2021 is any indication, we can expect Republicans to shoot for a map on which the party stands a good chance of winning at least 10 seats.

Ohio’s 2024 map is set, and it will be the same congressional district map as 2022. But the path Ohio took to this outcome was anything but straightforward. In November 2021, the Republican-controlled state government enacted a map where the GOP might have won as many as 13 of the state’s 15 districts. But in January 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the map as a partisan gerrymander, placing the map in the hands of the Ohio Redistricting Commission. With a 5-2 edge on the board, Republicans passed a second map in March 2022 that still gave the GOP a good chance of capturing at least 10 districts, if not more. Although the state’s high court ruled that this map was also unconstitutional in July 2022, by then the timeline for the case left the second map in place for the 2022 elections, in which Republicans won 10 of the state’s House seats.

The same map will now be used in 2024, too, after the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed legal challenges to the map in September. The plaintiffs who opposed the map had themselves sought a dismissal because they were less likely to have success before the state’s high court after the 2022 midterms, when Republicans captured a firmer majority with the retirement of Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who’d ruled against the state’s maps. If the mapmaking process had reopened for 2024, Republicans may have drawn lines even more favorable to the GOP. Under Ohio law, a map passed without bipartisan support can only remain in effect for two election cycles instead of a full decade, so because no Democrats supported the map currently in use, it will remain in effect through the 2024 election and then need to be redrawn before the 2026 election.

Before then, however, the state’s redistricting process could change due to a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that proponents aim to put on the November 2024 ballot. The proposal would implement a 15-member commission made up of Republicans, Democrats and independents, with bans against the participation of recent officeholders, lobbyists or party officials. The amendment also includes measures against partisan gerrymandering.