Eleven months after he died, Thomas Hofeller, the go-to man for Republican lawmakers seeking to draw new congressional or legislative voting maps, was back in court Tuesday, as lawyers in a gerrymandering case argued over access to his computer files.
Good-government group Common Cause of North Carolina is challenging legislative maps drawn in 2017 as too partisan in favor of Republican lawmakers to be legal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the federal courts have no place in deciding whether voting maps are partisan gerrymanders, but that ruling has no effect on this case, which alleges the maps violate the state constitution.
The case is set to go to trial in two weeks, but a three-judge panel must first decide whether dozens of Hofeller's personal files can be used as evidence in the case.
After Hofeller's death last August, his estranged daughter, Stephanie Lizon, was going through belongings in his Raleigh home and came across external hard drives and flash drives that contained thousands of documents, including some North Carolina legislative maps he drew in early 2017.
Federal courts ruled the state's legislative map unconstitutional in 2016 because numerous House and Senate districts were racially gerrymandered, and lawmakers had to redraw them in 2017. During the redraw, legislative leaders insisted that the race of voters wouldn't be part of the calculus in setting district lines. But Hofeller's files show he had pretty much completed legislative maps at home weeks before lawmakers even went into a special session to adopt new maps, according to Daniel Jacobson, an attorney for Common Cause. Hofeller's maps were strikingly similar to those that were finally adopted, Jacobson said, and some of his files included racial data on voters.
Jacobson argued that Hofeller's files are public record, as he had a contract with the General Assembly to produce new maps and state law requires all records used in creating voting maps to be made public after the maps are adopted. Even documents created before the contract was signed should be considered public record, he argued, because the GOP legislative majority had used Hofeller for years to draw maps, so he would have expected that relationship to continue and was merely working in advance.
"These are public records that should have been made available to the public back on Aug. 31, 2017," Jacobson said. "The legislative defendants themselves were responsible for ensuring that [Hofeller] complied with the terms of his contract and with state law requiring that these records be made public."
Phil Strach, an attorney for legislative leaders, argued that there's no way to know if the files accurately reflect Hofeller's work. Lizon found them in October but didn't turn them over to Common Cause for several months, he said, so there's no telling if data has been altered or deleted.
"There are serious questions about these files for a period of time," Strach said, calling the information in them "baseless speculation."
The only person who could demonstrate that the files are authentic, he argued, was Hofeller himself.
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