The decision opens the door for the legislature’s GOP majority to draw districts that help lock in power at the statehouse, and contribute to Republican power in Congress. The state’s high court also decided two long running voting cases Friday, including one on voter ID.
The Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court said Friday that partisan gerrymandering is legal in the state, opening the door for the legislature’s GOP majority to draw districts that help lock in power at the statehouse, and contribute to Republican power in Congress.
The state’s high court also decided two long running voting cases Friday: One dealing with the restoration of voting rights for felons and the other one of the state’s long-running voter ID cases.
The voter ID and gerrymandering decisions reverse opinions issued just last year by the state Supreme Court. In between, North Carolina voters flipped the court’s majority from Democratic to Republican, and Friday’s opinions all broke on party lines.
Chief Justice Paul Newby said the state’s judiciary doesn’t have the power to weigh in on partisan gerrymandering, and even if it did, the issue relies too much on the eye of the beholder to be decided by the courts.
“Those [constitutional] limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering,“ Newby wrote. „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. Furthermore, were this court to create such a limitation, there is no judicially discoverable or manageable standard for adjudicating such claims. The constitution does not require or permit a standard known only to four justices.”
The high court’s two Democrats, justices Michael Morgan and Anita Earls, a former civil rights attorney who often crusaded against GOP redistricting and voter ID laws before being elected to the bench, dissented.
“Unchecked partisan gerrymandering allows the controlling party of the General Assembly to draw legislative redistricting plans in a way that dilutes the voting power of voters in the disfavored party,” Earls wrote in the dissent. ”In so doing, those who hold political power can guarantee that they remain in office for decades, making them impervious to the popular will. … This is not how democracy should function.”
Republicans praised the rulings Friday, saying the court’s GOP majority reversed years of Democratic overreach in political cases before the court.
