Voided Wake school board, commissioner districts to cost state, county

North Carolina and the Wake County Board of Elections are on the hook for more than $400,000 in legal fees and other court costs racked up by voters who successfully challenged district maps for the Wake County Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education.

Posted 3:16 p.m. Sep 29, 2017 — Updated 3:16 p.m. Sep 29, 2017

Matthew Burns

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina and the Wake County Board of Elections are on the hook for more than $400,000 in legal fees and other court costs racked up by voters who successfully challenged district maps for the Wake County Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education.

Federal judges on Friday ordered the state and the county elections board to pay $375,520 in the plaintiffs' attorney fees, $8,600 in court costs, $17,719 in fees the plaintiffs paid to expert witnesses and $5,435 in other costs.

State lawmakers overhauled Wake County's school board districts in 2013, switching from nine single-member districts to seven districts plus two regional districts – one covering the urban center of the county and the other the ring of suburban and rural areas around the edge of the county. Two years later, lawmakers adopted a similar map for the Board of Commissioners, which had seven members voted on countywide.

Opponents of the maps noted that the Republican-controlled legislature put the new maps in place after Democrats took control of each board, and a group of voters challenged the changes in court, alleging at least one district was racially gerrymandered and that the number of voters in each of the districts varied wildly.

State lawmakers refused to defend the maps, leaving it up to the Wake County Board of Elections.

A federal judge initially upheld the maps, but the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that the plaintiffs clearly demonstrated the maps violated the one-person, one-vote provision of the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions.

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