The final piece of the puzzle is now available in North Carolina’s high-profile redistricting case.

The N.C. Supreme Court published its opinion in the case Monday, giving lawmakers and their challengers in the lawsuit the details they need to finish drawing new political districts.

The legislature is guaranteed a second attempt at drawing the maps by state law, but the court doesn’t have to go along with what they draw and could pick maps drawn either by one of the challengers in the case, or by an outside expert.

Both sides have just a few more days to finish; the maps are due Friday. Legislative leaders have said they will get it done, but the time crunch means they won’t have time for public hearings like the ones they held last fall during their first attempt at drawing the maps.

The state’s highest court struck down the Republican-led legislature’s maps, for districts used to elect both Congress and the N.C. General Assembly, as unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. The maps were so heavily skewed in favor of Republican candidates that they violated Democratic voters’ rights to freedom of speech and free elections, among other violations, the court said.

“When on the basis of partisanship the General Assembly enacts a districting plan that diminishes or dilutes a voter’s opportunity to aggregate with likeminded voters to elect a governing majority — that is, when a districting plan systematically makes it harder for one group of voters to elect a governing majority than another group of voters of equal size—the General Assembly infringes upon that voter’s fundamental right to vote,” Justice Robin Hudson wrote for the majority.

For state lawmakers looking for guidance in drawing the new maps, the justices provided examples of the kinds of mathematical evidence that could be used to prove whether future maps violate voters’ rights, but didn’t order the use of any one test, and said there is “no magic number of Democratic or Republican districts that is required.” The various tests and measures they suggested were based on reports from the expert witnesses in the trial, on both sides of the case.

The opinion added that if the justices had not ruled as they did, it would have meant giving the legislature “unlimited power to draw electoral maps that keep themselves and our members of Congress in office as long as they want, regardless of the will of the people, by making some votes more powerful than others.”

The Supreme Court issued a brief 20-page order in the case more than a week ago but took a week to prepare the full 217-page document, including concurring and dissenting opinions.

The court has a 4-3 Democratic majority and the ruling was along party lines. All four Democrats were in the majority, and all three Republicans dissented, saying they would have allowed the maps.

Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote a scathing dissent, joined by the other Republican justices, accusing the court’s Democratic majority of engaging in judicial activism to advance purely political goals.

“In its analysis, the majority misstates the history, the case law of this Court, and the meaning of various portions of our Declaration of Rights,” Newby wrote. “In its remedy the majority replaces established principles with ambiguity, basically saying that judges alone know which redistricting plan will be constitutional and accepted by this Court based on analysis by political scientists.”

However, the majority opinion quotes Newby himself as justification for part of the ruling in this case, noting that as recently as 2021 Newby had written that “A system of fair elections is foundational to self-government.”

And just as the Republicans accused their Democratic colleagues of judicial activism, the Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of making unfounded claims.

The majority opinion says that “the dissent asserts, contrary to the findings and the extensive evidence at the trial and with no citation to the record or other authority, that ‘partisan gerrymandering has no significant impact upon the right to vote on equal terms.’ Our contrary view is the beating heart of this case.”