The three-judge panel initially found a total of 28 districts in both chambers had been gerrymandered to produce that result.

Their finding later was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the General Assembly went back to the drawing board this summer to come up with a new plan that GOP legislators said did not take race into consideration at all.

But the voters, represented by Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice, protested in an Oct. 12 hearing that several of these redrawn districts still appeared to be racially gerrymandered and others violated other election laws.

The judicial panel entered its order last week saying that it still had concerns about nine, newly-revised districts and that it was considering bringing Persily on board because of the limited time before the 2018 election cycle.

The other judges on the panel include Judge James Wynn Jr. of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder of Winston-Salem who, like Eagles, is from the North Carolina Middle District centered in Greensboro.

In response to the order, Persily filed an affidavit Friday asserting that he had no conflicts of interest that would prevent him from serving in the case.