RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) - Voters who claimed North Carolina's 2023 Senate map violated the Voting Rights Act dismissed their legal case Monday after several years of litigation. 

Plaintiffs Moses Matthews and Rodney Pierce - who has since been elected to a term in the state House - agreed to dismiss their case and not refile claims due to last month's Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which imposes strict limits on how racial discrimination can be remedied in redistricting maps.

The high court's recent interpretation means that the ability of a group of voters to elect their preferred candidate will depend on the voting preferences of the other voters in the district, not race. 

"In 2023, the Republican-controlled General Assembly divided my county and six other majority-Black counties in northeastern North Carolina among four Senate districts in a way that makes it impossible for a Black candidate to be elected to the Senate in any of those counties," Pierce said. 

The case had been pending before the Fourth Circuit after a federal judge concluded last year that party preference, rather than race, drives voting in the Southern state.  

"We sued in federal court to force the legislature to honor the VRA, but in the Louisiana case the Supreme Court effectively made the VRA a meaningless law with no teeth. Because of that decision, there is no longer a path open to us to protect the voting rights of Black citizens in my part of the state, so we have dismissed the suit," Pierce said.

The plaintiffs also agreed to pay the legal costs of legislative defendants Speaker of the House Destin Hall and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, while the state board of elections - which declined to comment on the dismissal - will pay its own. Representatives for Hall and Berger did not respond to a request for comment.

Pierce and Matthews first filed suit in 2023 after the Republican majority in the state's General Assembly pushed through new election maps. They claimed the new Senate map unlawfully split voting districts in the northeast in violation of the Voting Rights Act, dividing Black voters into multiple districts in an area where voting is "highly polarized among racial lines." 

The Republican defendants contended that racial data was not used while drafting the 2023 map in order to ensure partiality, and argued the plaintiffs failed to prove the Black population is politically cohesive or that voters wouldn't be able to elect Black-preferred candidates in the challenged districts. 

The 2023 redistricting cemented Republican control of the legislature, and the new state Senate map was used in the 2024 elections after a panel of Fourth Circuit judges allowed it to take effect.

North Carolina conducted additional congressional redistricting in 2025 in an attempt to flip a seat red in the U.S. House, but didn't redraw the state House and Senate maps. The 2023 Senate map is still in use and will be used through the end of the decade before redistricting occurs again.   

The case went to trial in February 2025, where the plaintiffs argued Republican lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act by "cracking" a majority-Black Senate district. U.S. District Judge James Dever quashed the case, finding in favor of the legislative defendants in September 2025. The George W. Bush appointee concluded that racial animosity is absent even when the interests of racial groups don't align, and that politics in the state - not race - explains voting patterns. The plaintiffs failed to prove the defendants violated the Voting Rights Act, he said, and the General Assembly was not required to draw a majority-Black district in the northeastern part of the state.

The plaintiff voters appealed the case to the Fourth Circuit, where the parties were still filing briefs. 

Another case claiming North Carolina's 2023 congressional map diluted minority votes - which eventually added the state's 2025 map - was voluntarily dismissed in January after a panel of judges found the 2023 map did not violate the U.S. Constitution or the Voting Rights Act.

Source: Courthouse News Service