In late November, after the election, the trial court ordered special elections in 2017, about halfway through what would ordinarily be two-year terms for state legislators. It set a March 15 deadline for state lawmakers to draw new maps.

An appeal of the August decision was already before the Supreme Court. State officials separately asked the justices to step in immediately to block the November ruling, which imposed what they called “the most extreme and intrusive remedy possible: partial invalidation of an election and imposition of a special election that overrides multiple provisions of the North Carolina Constitution.”

The officials asked the Supreme Court to act before the state’s General Assembly convened on Wednesday. The alternative, they said, was “forcing the newly elected legislators to spend the critical first few weeks of their new session drawing remedial maps.”

Allowing the special elections to proceed would disrupt lawmakers’ obligations, the officials said.

“They will be forced to do more campaigning and less governing than they otherwise would have,” the brief said, “at the expense of the constituents they were elected to represent.”

“Indeed, members with redrawn districts will have every incentive to neglect their current constituents and focus their efforts on voters in neighboring districts whose votes will count in the upcoming elections,” the brief continued.