{"id":1616910,"date":"2022-08-19T18:01:45","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T22:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1616910"},"modified":"2022-08-19T18:01:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-19T22:01:48","slug":"nc-supreme-court-says-voter-id-amendment-may-be-invalid-because-of-racial-gerrymandering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nc-supreme-court-says-voter-id-amendment-may-be-invalid-because-of-racial-gerrymandering\/","title":{"rendered":"NC Supreme Court Says Voter ID Amendment May Be Invalid Because Of Racial Gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnc-supreme-court-says-voter-id-amendment-may-be-invalid-because-of-racial-gerrymandering%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1616910&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/north-carolina\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">North Carolina<\/a> Supreme Court ruled Friday that a constitutional amendment implementing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/voter-id\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">voter ID<\/a> requirements may be invalid because the legislature that passed it was racially gerrymandered.<\/p>\n<p>In a 4-3 party line <a href=\"https:\/\/appellate.nccourts.org\/opinions\/?c=1&amp;pdf=41699\">ruling<\/a>, the state Supreme Court found that a 2018 amendment to the state constitution may be invalid because the majorities in the state legislature came from districts that had been unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. The ruling did not outright overturn the amendment, which was ratified by voters in the same year, but remanded the case back to a lower court for further study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the final week of the final regular legislative session preceding the 2018 general election, a General Assembly that was composed of a substantial number of legislators elected from districts that the United States Supreme Court had conclusively determined to have resulted from unconstitutional racial gerrymandering enacted legislation presenting six constitutional amendments to North Carolina voters,\u201d Justice Anita Earls wrote for the Court\u2019s Democratic majority.<\/p>\n<p>The two amendments at issue in the case were the voter ID amendment, as well as another amendment preventing the state income tax from ever being raised above 7%. The amendments were passed by a three-fifths majority of both chambers of the legislature; but the voter ID amendment only passed by two votes in the state House of Representatives and three in the Senate; the tax cap amendment passed by just one vote in the House and four votes in the Senate. In the general election in 2018, both amendments were ratified a majority of voters.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, a federal court ruling found that nearly 30 legislative districts were illegal racial gerrymanders; 100 of the state\u2019s 170 legislative seats had to be redrawn, the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/north-carolina-constitutions-constitutional-amendments-supreme-court-government-and-politics-b7f91cdc8dd7ee1ed80cc50e0fe91382\">Associated Press<\/a> reported. Judges allowed the state legislators elected in 2016 to serve their two-year terms. But in 2018, using redrawn legislative maps, voters in the state broke Republican supermajorities in both houses, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/news\/politics-government\/article264680559.html\">Raleigh News &#038; Observer<\/a> added.<\/p>\n<p>The 2018 election formed the basis for the lawsuit, brought by the NAACP, which contended that even though voters had approved the amendments, they were invalid because they had been introduced by an unconstitutional legislature.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe conclude that \u2026 the North Carolina Constitution impose[s] limits on these legislators\u2019 authority to initiate the process of amending the constitution under these circumstances,\u201d Earls wrote, adding, however, that the trial court\u2019s ruling invalidating the amendments was too broad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn particular, the trial court should have examined \u2026 whether the legislature was composed of a sufficient number of legislators elected from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts\u2014or from districts that were made possible by the unconstitutional gerrymander\u2014such that the votes of those legislators could have been decisive in passing the challenged enactments \u2026 In this case, however, the record is clear that votes of legislators from unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts could have been decisive.\u201d The Court remanded the case back to the trial court to determine whether the amendment would have kept the legislators who passed it in power, whether it would have continued to exclude certain voters, or whether it would constitute the same kind of discrimination as the gerrymander itself.<\/p>\n<p>Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Tim Moore (R), called the decision a \u201cjudicial coup\u201d and vowed to keep fighting for the amendments in court.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis party-line ruling is in direct contradiction to the rule of law and the will of the voters,\u201d Moore said in a <a href=\"http:\/\/speakermoore.com\/unprecedented-nc-supreme-court-ruling-undermines-voters-constitution\/\">statement<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cI will continue to fight for\u00a0the\u00a0Voter ID and Tax Cap Amendments, which were overwhelmingly approved by the people of North Carolina. It\u2019s time to end the judicial coup that is unilaterally altering our constitution and subverting the will of North Carolina\u00a0voters.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Friday that a constitutional amendment implementing voter ID requirements may be invalid because the legislature that passed it was racially gerrymandered. In a 4-3 party line ruling, the state Supreme Court found that a 2018 amendment to the state constitution may be invalid because the majorities in the state &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1609129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1616910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1609129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}