Update: Hours after Maryland Governor Larry Hogan vetoed a new congressional district map favored by Democrats on Thursday, lawmakers overturned his veto.

Hogan argued that the map makes a “mockery of our democracy” in a statement. He also called on the Biden administration to add Maryland to its lawsuit against Texas for violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But the legislation passed with a veto-proof majority in both the Senate and the House of Delegates, and lawmakers moved to quickly override the governor’s veto.

Original:

Maryland lawmakers approved a new map of the state’s eight congressional districts in this week’s special session. The redistricting plan passed the state Senate on Wednesday after being approved by the House of Delegates on Tuesday. The vote fell along party lines, with strong opposition from Republican lawmakers and Gov. Larry Hogan. Immediately after it passed, a group called Fair Maps Maryland announced it will challenge the plan in court. The group was formed by several people close to Gov. Hogan, including his former strategist and communications director Doug Mayer.

The map lawmakers approved was drawn by the Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission, which includes four Democrat and two Republican members. Gov. Hogan had proposed an alternative map drawn by the Maryland Citizens Redistricting Commission, which he created earlier this year. Republicans attempted to pass amendments to get legislators to approve the citizens’ redistricting commission map, The lawmakers’ map largely maintains the status quo of district boundaries, including parts of Montgomery County in the 6th Congressional District. The citizens’ commission map draws the districts more compactly and extends the 6th District east into heavily-red Frederick and Carroll counties and only touches the northwest tip of Montgomery County.

Hogan, who has vowed since the beginning of his tenure to “terminate gerrymandering,” is likely to veto the legislature’s map, but Democrats have the votes to override it. It’s unclear if the map will be in place for upcoming June primary and November general elections; if the new map is challenged in court, the current district maps–drawn in 2011–will be used.

The map would put Democratic portions of Anne Arundel County in the 1st Congressional District, a majority Republican district on the Eastern Shore. This would make the district more competitive for the state’s lone Republican Congressman, Rep. Andy Harris. In contrast, the citizens commission’s map gives Republicans an advantage in both the 6th and 1st Districts, and keeps the districts more compact and contiguous.

The Democrats’ map also maintains the unusual shape of the 6th Congressional District, which includes heavily Democratic Gaithersburg, a city in Montgomery County, and extends into the state’s redder westernmost counties. In 2017, a panel of three federal judges ruled that when Democrats redrew district boundaries during the last redistricting process in 2011, the 6th Congressional District was unconstitutionally and intentionally drawn to flip control away from Republicans to Democrats. The case made it to the Supreme Court in 2018, with the court determining that it should be left up to the state.

Today, county residents in District 6, especially in “up county”–the area north of Germantown–remain divided about whether they identify with communities in western Maryland. County Councilmember Andrew Friedson, who represents parts of the up county area, told DCist/WAMU constituents in the northwest section of the county do identify with their rural counterparts in Frederick and other western counties.

“I certainly think in large portions of western Montgomery County in and near the agricultural reserve, there’s much more focus and emphasis on a rural land use matter, understandably,” Friedson told DCist/WAMU.

Friedson adds that up county has a lot of connections to Frederick County, including Route 15, which connects Maryland to northern Virginia, and Whites Ferry, which crosses the Potomac River to connect Montgomery and Loudoun counties (the ferry is currently not operating due to a legal dispute).

Other county residents from Gaithersburg, in the 6th District, like Mary Lanigan, told the citizens’ redistricting commission members at a hearing over the summer that they don’t identify with more rural parts of the state. Lanigan and others asked the commission to draw the district more compact and contiguous.

“I love western Maryland, but truthfully my concerns as a resident of Gaithersburg differ sharply from those of the residents in Allegany and Garrett counties,” Lanigan said.

Democratic lawmakers who voted in favor of the map this week cited the value of maintaining constituents in their current districts. According to Karl Aro, chair of the legislative redistricting committee, the proposed map is based on the maps from previous redistricting efforts in 2011.

“Initially, the idea was to try to keep as many people as possible in their current [congressional] districts for continuity reasons,” Aro told committee members prior to a vote on the floor.

But Anne Arundel County Senator Bryan Simonaire, one of two Republicans on the legislative committee who voted against the map, noted that the 2011 maps were gerrymandered.

“If you’re starting from a baseline where it’s seriously gerrymandered and our goal was to keep [people] relatively in their same district, the end result is pretty much going to be gerrymandered again,” Simonaire said.

During debate on the Senate and House floors this week, Republican lawmakers interrogated Democratic lawmakers about the factors that went into drawing the map’s boundaries. Republicans also addressed the fact that the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a group that does national nonpartisan analysis to understand and address partisan gerrymandering, gave the legislative committee’s map an “F” on partisan fairness.

In contrast, the citizens’ redistricting map got an “A” in partisan fairness and “Cs” in competitiveness and geography from the project. Earlier this week, Democratic lawmakers refused to move the citizens’ map out of committee for a vote on the House and Senate floor.

Helen Brewer, a legal analyst with the Princeton Project, told DCist/WAMU the difference in partisan fairness between the independent commission’s map and the Democrats’ map is indicative of a wider trend in the U.S.

“In states that have independent redistricting commissions, those commissions so far have oftentimes produced maps that do seem to be more fair maps that are scoring more highly on our partisan fairness metrics, to be sure,” she said.

But Democrats in the General Assembly rejected the assessment, noting that the project’s grades didn’t account for representation of communities of color.

“If we have really partisan maps that come out of the legislature, they don’t follow the citizen maps, then we’ll do whatever we have to do to challenge it,” Hogan told reporters prior to the special session.

This story was updated to reflect the announcement that Fair Maps Maryland will challenge the redistricting plan in court.