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The North Carolina Supreme Court may be set to put the brakes on a constitutional amendment requiring voters to produce a valid ID before casting a ballot.
The state’s highest court ruled 4-3 along party lines that the requirement, which was added to the North Carolina constitution in 2018 via amendment, could be invalid because the GOP majorities in the state legislature were allegedly the result of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
“North Carolina’s long-litigated photo voter identification law was appraised at the state Supreme Court on Monday. Justices heard arguments on whether it was reasonable for trial judges to throw out the law that they determined was tainted by racial bias and designed to help Republicans retain their grip on the legislature.” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
“The voter ID law approved by the General Assembly in December 2018, but it has never been enforced, as the requirement has been blocked by both federal and state courts over time. That remains the case for next month’s midterms. An attorney for the Republican legislative leaders said a majority of trial judges conducting a trial on the law last year got both facts and conclusions wrong when they struck down the law. Those judges failed to take into account the bipartisan nature of its passage and rule changes that would eliminate any disadvantage that Black voters would have in carrying a photo ID, lawyer Pete Patterson said. People without qualifying IDs would still able to cast ballots by filling out a form,” the report added.
“This is the most forgiving, reasonable impediment (form) provision in the nation,” Patterson told the justices in urging them to uphold the law or void the trial court’s decision. “The notion that this was meant to be passed for partisan entrenchment just does not match up with the evidence.”
State Republican leaders were outraged by the ruling.
“Four Democratic justices have all but thrown out the legitimate votes of millions of North Carolinians in a brazen, partisan attempt to remove the voter ID requirement from our Constitution and deny the people the ability to amend their own Constitution,” state Sen. Paul Newton, a Republican who co-chairs the Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee, said in a press release, the News & Observer reported.
“This is a direct attack on our democratic form of government from the most activist court in the state’s history,” he added.
Meanwhile, the paper added, Justice Phil Berger Jr., a Republican whose father is Senate leader Phil Berger, suggested in a dissent that state Republicans may want to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the matter.
“Striking at the very heart of our form of government, the majority unilaterally reassigns constitutional duties and declares that the will of the judges is superior to the will of the people of North Carolina,” Justice Berger wrote. “At what point does the seizure of popular sovereignty by this Court violate the federal constitution?”
The original case was brought by the NAACP, which argued that while voters may have approved the amendment, it was passed initially by an unconstitutional legislative majority.
“We conclude that … the North Carolina Constitution impose[s] limits on these legislators’ authority to initiate the process of amending the constitution under these circumstances,” Earls wrote, going on to add that the lower court’s ruling invalidating the amendments was overly broad, The Daily Wire noted.
“In particular, the trial court should have examined … whether the legislature was composed of a sufficient number of legislators elected from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts—or from districts that were made possible by the unconstitutional gerrymander—such that the votes of those legislators could have been decisive in passing the challenged enactments … In this case, however, the record is clear that votes of legislators from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts could have been decisive,” Earls added.
House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, also lambasted the ruling, calling it a “judicial coup,” while pledging to continue fighting for the amendments in court.
“This party-line ruling is in direct contradiction to the rule of law and the will of the voters,” Moore said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for the Voter ID and Tax Cap Amendments, which were overwhelmingly approved by the people of North Carolina. It’s time to end the judicial coup that is unilaterally altering our constitution and subverting the will of North Carolina voters.”
