A Law Firm That Helped Gut the Voting Rights Act Just Filed Suit on the Eastern Shore
Here's a story that starts in Annapolis and ends up in a Dorchester County courthouse, with a law firm that has already helped reshape voting rights law once this year.
Maryland lawmakers just passed a constitutional amendment about how the state draws its congressional districts. It goes to voters this November. Before voters even get a say, two separate Republican-led lawsuits are trying to knock it off the ballot entirely, and the newer one was filed in a court just down the road from Queen Anne's County.
That might sound like a dry legal fight over district lines. It's not. It's about whether the people who represent the Eastern Shore in Congress get decided by voters at the ballot box, or by lawyers picking the courthouse they think will rule their way.
FIRST: WHY DOES IT MATTER WHERE A LAWSUIT GETS FILED?
Lawsuits usually can be filed in more than one place. Lawyers know that different courthouses, and different judges, sometimes see the same legal question differently. So attorneys will sometimes choose the courthouse they believe gives their client the best shot, even if the case has nothing to do with that specific county. This is often called "venue shopping."
In this story, one of the attorneys involved said openly that his side was "trying to find a judge they thought would give it a fair shake." Whether that's a legitimate legal strategy or an attempt to shop for a favorable outcome is part of what's being fought over here.
WHAT HAPPENED
In early August, the Maryland General Assembly held a special session and passed House Bill 2100, a constitutional amendment that would set new standards for how the state draws its eight congressional districts. It passed largely along party lines, with Democrats holding supermajorities in both chambers. Because it's a constitutional amendment, it doesn't take effect on its own. It goes to Maryland voters as a ballot question this November.
The amendment is meant to undo the effect of a 2022 court ruling by Judge Lynne Battaglia, which struck down an earlier congressional map by applying "compact and contiguous" language from the state constitution, language that had previously only applied to state legislative districts, not congressional ones. Senate President Bill Ferguson said the amendment simply restores the standards Maryland used for decades before that ruling.
Republicans immediately signaled they'd fight it in court. Two lawsuits followed.
The first, filed August 6, came from members of the Maryland Freedom Caucus and Senate Republican leadership, including Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr., who represents the Upper Shore, home to Queen Anne's County. That case is represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and has a hearing scheduled in Annapolis for August 25.
The second lawsuit, filed August 10 in Dorchester County, came from five Republicans: Sen. Chris West, Sen. Mary Beth Carozza, Del. Chris Adams, Sen. Johnny Mautz, and Dorchester County Republican Central Committee member Lindsay Wheatley. This case is being handled by five attorneys from BakerHostetler, a national law firm that advised Louisiana Republicans on the redistricting fight that eventually produced the U.S. Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision, which struck down major parts of the Voting Rights Act's protections against racial gerrymandering.
Sen. Mautz said Dorchester was chosen specifically because the Eastern Shore is the region most affected. Maryland Republican Party chair Nicole Beus Harris echoed that reasoning in a statement, while denying the party itself filed the case. It's still not clear who is paying the legal bills. Sen. West, one of the plaintiffs, said he expects them to be "considerable" and doesn't know who's covering the cost.
The state elections board has asked that the Dorchester case be moved to Annapolis so both lawsuits can be heard together. The Dorchester plaintiffs are fighting that move. Ballots must be certified by August 31.
WHAT SUPPORTERS OF THE AMENDMENT SAY
Senate President Bill Ferguson says the amendment simply clarifies rules Maryland used for decades, and that voters, not a single judge's 2022 ruling, should get the final say on how those rules work going forward. House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk says it returns congressional redistricting standards to what was in place before the Battaglia decision. Some progressive advocacy groups actually wanted lawmakers to go further and adopt the specific map recommended by Governor Wes Moore's redistricting commission, and rallied outside the State House pushing for that.
WHAT THE LAWSUITS SAY
Sen. Chris West, an attorney and lead plaintiff in the Dorchester case, argues the amendment "strips away all criteria" courts could use to judge whether a future congressional map is legal, and that without those standards, courts would have "no choice but to dismiss" any challenge to a future map, no matter how gerrymandered. He says it undercuts protections in Maryland's 250-year-old Declaration of Rights. Both lawsuits also challenge the process itself, arguing lawmakers improperly bypassed a July 1 ballot deadline and dropped a plain-language requirement for ballot questions that took effect this year. Some legal experts have already said publicly they doubt the lawsuits will succeed.
WHAT WE DON'T KNOW YET
We don't know who is financing the Dorchester lawsuit. We don't know whether the two cases will be combined and heard together in Annapolis, or whether the Dorchester case stays put. We don't know how the August 25 hearing will go, or whether the state will hit its August 31 ballot certification deadline. And ultimately, we don't know how Maryland voters will decide the underlying question in November, assuming it stays on the ballot at all.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
- Mark August 25 on your calendar and watch for coverage of the Annapolis hearing, it's the next real checkpoint in this fight.
- Confirm your Maryland voter registration is current now, before the fall rush, at elections.maryland.gov.
- Call or email your Eastern Shore state legislators and tell them directly whether you want this question decided by voters in November.
- Watch for GTC's plain-language breakdown of the actual November ballot question once it's finalized, so you can vote informed either way.
