GOP majority on NC Supreme Court is just trying to undo a last-minute power grab | Opinion

The North Carolina Supreme Court arguably functioned as a third house of the state legislature from 2019 through 2022.

With a Republican majority in both houses of the General Assembly, the court’s Democratic majority took up many politically-charged cases and came to several hasty decisions. Now, there’s an opportunity to address two of the most erroneous decisions.

In the coming years, the new conservative majority on the court will likely reverse course on many of the previous majority’s rulings. Nevertheless, a little-used procedure will soon allow them to correct errors in two election law cases the court decided last-minute last December.

I believe the court erred on both legal and procedural grounds.

The first erroneous decision was in Holmes v. Moore. The court majority decided, without convincing evidence, that “discriminatory intent was a motivation” for the legislature to pass a voter ID law. The General Assembly enacted that law on the heels of a vote by the N.C. people to require voter ID in the state constitution. The progressive majority also unquestioningly accepted erroneous findings from a lower court, using those as the basis for their mistaken ruling.

The court majority did the opposite in a redistricting case decision they issued the same day: Harper v. Hall. In that case, they rejected the lower court’s findings of fact. That rejection allowed them to decide that state Senate districts drawn by the legislature were not “constitutionally compliant.”

Those inconsistencies led Justice Phil Berger Jr. to complain in his dissent in Holmes v. Moore that “the logic-fluid view of factual findings from the trial courts in these two cases today demonstrates that the majority is more interested in outcomes than consistency.”

The unusual procedures they used to hear both cases early also reflected outcome-based decision-making. In both cases, they bypassed the normal appeals process to hear the cases early. This truncated process allowed both cases to come before the court by October 2022, so they could reach a decision “at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Even without fast-tracking, the court would’ve resolved the normal appeals process in plenty of time for the 2024 election. The court’s progressive majority failed to show that there would be any harm in letting the normal appeals process take its course. Their stated motivation is suspect.

Based on the majority’s conduct, their real motivation was something completely different.

As if sensing that voters were going to end their control of the Supreme Court in the 2022 election, the progressive majority broke with standard judicial procedure so they could decide those cases before they lost the power to do so. Sure enough, progressives lost both Supreme Court races in November. But the damage had been done, and the lame-duck majority issued its rulings on Dec. 16.

So, are we stuck with those rulings? Fortunately, no.

Rule 31 of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure allows parties to request a rehearing if they believe the court “overlooked or misapprehended” points of fact or law in its ruling. Legislative defendants had to file the request within 15 days of the court issuing certified copies of its ruling. They filed their petition for a rehearing with one day to spare.

In issuing the order for the rehearing, Justice Trey Allan noted that the petitioners’ request “satisfies the criteria” required by Rule 31. The court will hold the rehearing in March.

The previous court majority used raw power to short-circuit the normal judicial process and unjustly rule on two election law cases out of turn. The new majority now has the chance to right those wrongs. They should take full advantage of that opportunity.

Andy Jackson, a PhD in political science, is Director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh.