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The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide on landmark partisan gerrymandering cases involving North Carolina and Maryland legislative maps. But the high court’s decision won’t matter if the Democrats succeed in using state courts to undemocratically secure majorities.

It’s the fad du jour to complain about partisan gerrymandering, but there’s a more sinister power grab unfolding right under your nose: the judicial gerrymander. Unaccountable courts may soon decide which party controls state legislatures and, by extension, the U.S. House of Representatives.

Two fundamental dynamics are at play, and North Carolina is ripe battleground territory where national Democrats have already put this nuanced gerrymandering strategy to work.

First, Democrats in North Carolina and around the country are suing for new districts based on the flawed legal theory that elected government should be divided by party according to the proportion of registered Democratic and Republican voters in a state.

This proportionality argument is flawed because it ignores the fact that Democrats are concentrated in a few urban districts while Republicans are spread out everywhere. Democrats win lopsided victories in a handful of urban areas while Republicans tend to win everywhere in between. Changing our electoral system based on the Democrats’ flawed logic would cause urban Democrats to dominate rural Republicans. It’s a war on small towns and voters.

The Democrats’ lawsuit in North Carolina uses that theory of proportionality to ask the Democratic-controlled North Carolina state courts to draw new legislative maps to favor Democrats. As proof that this is a national strategy, look no further than who is paying for the lawsuit: Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee. Need more proof? Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias – whose stated professional goal is to “elect Democrats” – is lead counsel.

But the Democrats’ proportionality argument seems only to apply when it benefits Democrats: The second dynamic at work is the gross imbalance in power on the state Supreme Court. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper stacked the state Supreme Court with Democrats, contradicting his own party’s legal argument about proportional representation. The Democrats now command a supermajority of six to one.

And it’s no coincidence that the stacked bench will decide whether to side with their own Democratic Party to draw new maps that help elect their fellow Democrats.

The new Democratic legislative majority installed by the partisan judiciary would then eliminate Republican Members of Congress during the 2021 redistricting period.

The expanded Democratic supermajority on the N.C. Supreme Court reveals the Democratic Party’s talking points about “balance” in government for what they really are: self-serving and hypocritical rhetoric masking their power grab.

Despite their high-minded claims about the importance of proportional representation, we still haven’t heard one Democrat explain why that “balance” only applies when Republicans are in charge.

Americans want fair representation, and this isn’t it.  Wielding the partisan state Supreme Court to draw legislative maps would weaponize one branch of government to secure the political ambitions of one political party in another branch of government. And rest assured, if it’s successful, the show will soon be coming to your state.

Published in The Hill.