North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing electoral district boundaries to favor one political party over another, is not subject to state court review. The ruling, which overturns previous decisions from when the court was under Democratic control, is a victory for the GOP state legislature, which had brought the case before the court after gaining a majority in the 2020 elections. The state Supreme Court’s decision may also prompt the US Supreme Court to dismiss a case on the same issue that is currently before it.
The North Carolina court said that the state’s constitution assigns redistricting authority to the General Assembly, subject to explicit limitations in the text, but that those limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering. The court stated that it was not within its authority to create such limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to another branch. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Paul Newby and joined by the court’s four other Republican members. A dissenting opinion was written by Democratic Justice Anita Earls and joined by Justice Michael Morgan.
The ruling is a setback for voting rights groups that had challenged the congressional plan drawn up by the Republican legislature after the 2020 census. The decision will prevent groups from going to state court in the future to bring claims of extreme partisan gerrymandering against North Carolina maps. The state Republican Party praised the ruling, stating that it was a step toward restoring respect for the Constitution and taking politics out of the courtroom.
The US Supreme Court had before it an appeal of the North Carolina case brought by the Republican legislature before the GOP gained control of the state Supreme Court. The case asked the justices to adopt an aggressive theory that would limit the role state courts can play in election disputes. The Independent State Legislature theory was pushed by conservatives and supporters of former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election. The US Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in December but had not issued a decision.
The North Carolina ruling also reversed the court’s decision to block the state’s 2018 voter ID law. Last year, the court held that the law was “motivated by a racially discriminatory purpose,” but the new Republican majority found that opponents of the law could not prove that it was enacted with discriminatory intent or that it produced a meaningful disparate impact along racial lines. The majority framed its decision as a return to a less politicized court.
Justice Michael Morgan, in his dissenting opinion, criticized the new Republican majority for infusing partisan politics into the case’s outcome. Morgan also criticized the decision to overturn the court’s precedent, stating that every presumption is construed in favor of the court’s previous holding and that they should overrule themselves only if “the previous majority clearly mistook some important fact or overlooked an express and weighty authority in contradiction to its prior ruling.”
Original Story at www.cnn.com – 2023-04-28 18:03:00