Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have passed a new congressional map that could give their party another seat in the U.S. House. As The New York Times reports, the measure cleared the State Senate this week, with the House expected to follow soon. Due to the state constitution, Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, cannot veto redistricting measures, leaving Republicans in full control of the process.

Party leaders, including Senate President Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall, said the new map protects what they call “the will of the people.” Democrats and voting-rights advocates argue the plan unfairly targets the First Congressional District, currently held by Democrat Don Davis, by redrawing its lines to include more conservative counties while splitting up several majority-Black areas.

“This change goes against our shared values,” Davis said in a statement to The New York Times. “People across eastern North Carolina—Democrats and Republicans alike—don’t want this kind of manipulation.”

Republicans already control 10 of the state’s 14 congressional seats. The new boundaries could boost that number to 11. Civil-rights groups say the plan may face legal challenges under the Voting Rights Act, which is also under threat. 

The Times notes that the redistricting follows similar Republican efforts in other states, including Texas and Missouri, to secure congressional gains before next year’s midterm elections. 

Governor Stein criticized the legislature for focusing on redistricting instead of passing a state budget. “They are abusing their power to take away the people’s power,” he said during a press conference. “This is about politicians choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their representatives.”

While supporters call it routine politics, the decision revives a long and painful history of voter suppression in North Carolina. For more than a century, the state has been at the center of fights over ballot access—from literacy tests and poll taxes during the Jim Crow era to the voter-ID laws and early-voting cutbacks struck down by federal courts in recent years. In 2013, a sweeping election law targeting Black turnout was ruled unconstitutional for what judges said targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

Those historical patterns make this newest map more than a political maneuver. As The New York Times has documented, every cycle of redistricting in North Carolina reshapes who gets heard and who gets pushed to the margins.