Maryland lawmakers passed House Bill 2100 on Aug. 4, sending a ballot question to voters in November that would amend the state constitution to say it sets no rules for how congressional districts are drawn.
The bill was introduced in response to a court ruling in 2022 that threw out a Democrat-drawn map expected to give the party all eight of Maryland’s congressional seats. Without the state’s previous restrictions on congressional mapmaking, Democrats could again try to redraw the map before 2028—targeting the state’s last Republican seat, held by Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.).
The amendment itself contains no new map and draws no district lines. It states that the constitution’s district standards apply only to the state’s General Assembly seats and that nothing in the constitution “provides applicable criteria for the boundaries of a congressional districting plan.”
The state’s constitution requires districts to be compact, connected, and drawn with regard for natural boundaries and county and city lines. In 2022, a state circuit court judge ruled those rules apply to congressional districts too and struck down a Democrat-drawn 8–0 map as “extreme partisan gerrymandering.” The state adopted a replacement later that year, signed by the Republican governor at the time.
The amendment would also give the General Assembly power to grant Maryland’s highest court original jurisdiction over challenges to the congressional map—but lawmakers would still have to pass a separate law to do it. The 2022 challenge was decided in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. The bill says the amendment is “not intended to provide new grounds to challenge” the current map, which gives Democrats seven of the state’s eight U.S. House seats.
The bill passed both chambers along party lines. Democrats hold supermajorities in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, more than the three-fifths in each chamber required to send a constitutional amendment to voters.
State and National Reaction
Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, signed the measure Wednesday afternoon. He tied it to the nationwide map fight over the past year in a post on X Tuesday evening.
“For over a year, I’ve warned that [President] Donald Trump and Republicans across the country are working to rig the system and weaken voting rights,” Moore wrote, saying the amendment would “ensure that Marylanders—and no one else—have the final say over their representation.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who spent months pressing Maryland Democrats to act after initial hesitation by some state senate Democrats, thanked Moore and state lawmakers in a post of his own for “standing up to the MAGA power grab.”
Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, told a committee hearing Monday that the decision of a single circuit judge is “not a binding precedent.” He has said the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which held that congressional districts drawn primarily based on race were unconstitutional, changed his thinking on mid-decade redistricting after he blocked a new map in February.
Asked last week whether a new map would follow if voters approve the amendment, Ferguson said: “We are taking this one step at a time. We'll see where we are after November.”
Republicans indicated they will go to court.
Maryland Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready, a Republican, wrote on X that the Senate vote fell along party lines and that “legal action is the next step,” adding that his caucus was “shut down as we fought to debate it and/or try to amend it to protect from gerrymandering.” He said Republicans would also campaign on the question this fall.
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Hershey told reporters Tuesday that a court challenge could be filed as soon as Wednesday. Hershey and Ready did not respond to a request for comment on the status of any legal challenges from The Epoch Times on Wednesday.
Republicans also argued that Democrats ignored a law they passed earlier this year in order to get the question on the ballot.
In May, the legislature passed a law requiring ballot questions to be written in plain language a voter can understand, with a title and a short explanation of what a yes or no vote would do. It also required the secretary of state to sign off on the wording by July 1 and give the public two weeks to comment. It passed without a single no vote in either chamber.
None of that happened with this week’s bill. Lawmakers wrote the question themselves, in the bill, and added a line exempting it from those rules passed a few months back. The Department of Legislative Services, the legislature’s own nonpartisan analysts, wrote that the bill “effectively exempts the ballot question from existing statutory requirements governing the timing and content of ballot questions.”
Harris, whose Eastern Shore district is the state’s only Republican-held seat, criticized the session in a statement to The Epoch Times on Monday.
“[Moore] would actually change the Maryland Constitution to have a double standard for drawing legislative districts—one strict standard for state legislative districts that requires them to be compact and respect geographic and jurisdictional boundaries, and no standard at all for congressional districts, allowing them to be drawn on a purely hyperpartisan basis—the only way they can attempt to eliminate the only Republican district left in the state,” Harris said.
Harris’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday after the bill sending the proposed amendment to voters was passed.
Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement that “Democrats did not start—nor did we ask for—this mid-decade redistricting fight. But we will finish it,” and contrasted Maryland’s referral to voters with Republican map changes she said were forced through “often in the dead of the night.”
According to the bill text, the amendment clarifies that certain standards apply only to General Assembly districts, authorizes the legislature to grant the state Supreme Court original jurisdiction over the congressional plan, and requires the criteria for congressional district boundaries “to be determined by applicable federal laws.” It carries no title and no explanation of what either a yes vote or a no vote would do.
