ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Maryland General Assembly will be introducing a newly drawn congressional map after a judge found the one enacted in December unconstitutional.
A new map has been drawn and was introduced in the Senate Monday evening.
Senate Bill 1012 was referred directly to committee for a hearing Tuesday morning at 8:30 a.m.
The map that passed during December's special session took months of meetings and work sessions.
The new map now is up on the General Assembly's website.
About an hour and a half before the House was scheduled to reconvene, Speaker Adrienne Jones posted a tweet about the joint-hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
See my joint statement with @SenBillFerg on Maryland’s redrawn Congressional map: pic.twitter.com/MS3L4tBr5P
— Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (@SpeakerAJones) March 28, 2022
The House only briefly mentioned redistricting on Monday, when the joint committee hearing time was announced and a delegate asked a procedural question about the bill not having been introduced in the House chamber.
The Delegate was told that this will be a bill that will originate in the Senate and that is the bill that will be taken up.
The Senate convened Monday evening and the redistricting map bill was read across the chamber floor, after which it was available to the public.
A court review hearing of the map will take place on Friday, April 1st at 9am.
In the meantime, the House Republican Caucus is calling for the maps that an independent commission recommended last November.
The GOP has continuously accused Maryland Democrats of redrawing the last maps "under the dark cloak of legislative privilege.”
Below is a joint statement they sent Monday to Jones.
Delegate Jason Buckel, a member of the Legislative Redistricting Advisory Commission, told WMAR-2 News in the hours before the Senate was scheduled to reconvene that he hadn't seen the new map and that he was not a part of the drawing of the new map.
"I am concerned," he said, adding that "it's unfortunate.. we still don't have congressional and legislative districts [as election campaigns continue]."
