NC Supreme Court Hands Win to GOP on Redistricting, Voter ID

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday handed a victory to the state’s Republican legislators by siding with a petition that asked the high court to rehear cases involving election maps and voter identification laws.

In a vote along partisan lines, the state’s Supreme Court voted 5–2 to rehear the two cases in March—ones that North Carolina’s Republican legislature had previously lost.

Two Republicans won seats on North Carolina Supreme Court after defeating their Democrat counterparts in November’s midterm election. This result saw the court flip to red for first time since 2016.

Republican hopes of reexamining the cases were revived by the court’s partisan switch.

In one of these cases Holmes v. MooreOn Dec. 16, 2022 the state Supreme Court decided to invalidate a law that required photo identification for voters. This decision was based on discrimination against minorities.

Justice Trey Allen Submitted an order Friday saw the fulfillment of all criteria necessary to adjudicate the request made by GOP legislative leaders that the case be reheard.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michael Morgan questioned whether the decision to rehear the case would call into question the court’s impartiality.

The other is the reverse. Moore v. Harper (formerly Harper v. Hall), the then Democrat-dominated court ruled on Dec. 16, 2022, to confirm a lower court decision to reject legislators’ version of a congressional election map and the state Senate election map.

Justice Allen wrote in a Separate order That the court has sufficient grounds for the court to rehear this case.

The redistricting case has since made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has reportedly been considering whether to hand down a decision in the case that could have far-reaching consequences for the authority state court have to impose limits on how state legislatures set election rules.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Moore v. Harper on Dec. 7, 2022, but is not expected to rule on it for several months. This means that the North Carolina Supreme Court could potentially issue a ruling in the case that reverses the Republican loss before the U.S. Supreme Court has issued its decision.

Friday’s rulings by the North Carolina Supreme Court mean that both cases will be reheard on March 14, 2023.

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In a recent legal filing, Republican lawmakers argued in Moore v. Harper that the North Carolina Supreme Court wrongfully infringed on state lawmakers’ ability to determine boundaries of legislative and congressional districts.

The court’s December ruling said that the state Senate boundaries redrawn previously by Republican legislators were tainted by partisan leanings and must be redrawn. It also ruled to uphold a congressional map drawn by lower court judges but that Republicans opposed.

A separate filing by Republican lawmakers argued that the correct legal standard was not applied in a decision that the state Supreme Court upheld on voter ID.

“Holmes was wrongly decided based on a predetermined outcome. We now have a chance to right this wrong and deliver on voter ID, which the voters of this state overwhelmingly support,” said Sam Hayes, general counsel for the House speaker, according to Spectrum News 1.

For more than a decade, North Carolina Republicans have been seeking to pass a law that would require voters to present photo identification. The state legislature passed voter ID laws in 2013, but they were struck down by a federal court. A similar law adopted in 2018 was struck down by the state Supreme Court in December.