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The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday overruled its previous decision that struck down the state’s GOP-drawn voting maps, finding that claims of partisan gerrymandering are political questions that cannot be resolved by the state’s courts.
The 5-2 party-line vote dismisses the underlying lawsuit that led to a sweeping election law clash at the U.S. Supreme Court, allowing the justices to potentially sidestep the dispute. The state court in separate rulings also reinstated laws that require voter-ID and prohibit certain felons from voting.
“Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text. Those limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering. It is not within the authority of this Court to amend the constitution to create such limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to another branch,” North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, wrote for the majority.
The court’s previous 4-3 Democratic majority had struck down the GOP-drawn map. After Republicans regained control in an expensive midterm election campaign, the party’s new 5-2 majority granted a request from GOP lawmakers to rehear the dispute, marking only the third time the court did so in the past three decades.
“Following decisions such as this, we must remember that, though the path forward might seem long and unyielding, an injustice that is so glaring, so lawless, and such a betrayal to the democratic values upon which our constitution is based will not stand forever,” Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, wrote in dissent.
