The United States House of Representative elections of 1998 in North Carolina were held on 3 November 1998 as part of the biennial election to the United States House of Representatives. All twelve seats in North Carolina, and 435 nationwide, were elected.
The Republicans won seven seats to the Democrats' five. Eleven incumbents won re-election, while Democrat Bill Hefner's retirement in the 8th district allowed Republican Robin Hayes to enter the House for the first time. The Libertarian Party ran in every district, almost quadrupling their total vote share, but their vote was smaller than the margin of victory in all races.
After the 1990 census, the US Department of Justice directed North Carolina under VRA preclearance to submit a map with two majority-minority districts. The resultant map with two such congressional districts, the 1st and 12th, was the subject of lawsuits by voters who claimed that it was an illegal racial gerrymander. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina dismissed the suit, which was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 28, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shaw v. Reno, found that the 12th congressional district was an unlawful racial gerrymander. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion found that if a district's shape, like the 12th's, was "so bizarre on its face that it is 'unexplainable on grounds other than race'", that it would be subject to strict scrutiny as a racial gerrymander, and remanded the case to the Eastern District of North Carolina.
On August 22, 1994, the Eastern District of North Carolina on remand in Shaw v. Hunt found that the 12th congressional district was a racial gerrymander (as the U.S. Supreme Court had directed), but ruled that the map satisfied strict scrutiny due to the compelling interest of compliance with the Voting Rights Act and increasing black political power.[1] This was again appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the Eastern District of North Carolina on June 13, 1996, and found that the North Carolina plan violated the Equal Protection Clause and that the 12th congressional district did not satisfy a compelling interest.[2]
