NC Supreme Court agrees to rehear voter ID, gerrymandering cases after majority flips

The North Carolina Supreme Court, in 5-2 decisions split along ideological lines, agreed Friday to rehear two important voting rights cases after Republican lawmakers asked the high court to reconsider its previous rulings.

In separate orders published Friday evening, the Supreme Court said it would hold new hearings next month on the two cases, one of them involving the constitutionality of political maps drawn by GOP lawmakers last year, and the other involving the constitutionality of the state’s voter ID law.

The court instructed parties in both cases to file additional legal briefs addressing specific questions before both cases are reheard on March 14.

Republican Justice Trey Allen, writing for the majority in both cases, said earlier precedent established that the court could rehear a recently issued ruling if the petitioner asking for the case to be reheard could make “a satisfactory showing that the opinion may be erroneous.”

Democratic justices Anita Earls and Michael Morgan both objected to the court’s decisions to rehear the cases.

Earls wrote that the decision to rehear the gerrymandering case constituted a “radical break with 205 years of history,” while Morgan wrote that there was no aspect of the arguments made by GOP lawmakers to rehear the voter ID case that met the court’s “historically and purposely high standards” for rehearing a case.

GOP candidates won both Supreme Court races on the ballot in November, taking the court from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 GOP majority. In December, before the new justices took their seats, the court ruled that the 2018 voter ID law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature was unconstitutional, because it had deliberately been written to harm Black voters more than white voters.

The court also reviewed maps drawn by Republican lawmakers for use in legislative elections in 2022, and concluded that the state Senate map was unconstitutional and needed to be redrawn. The court allowed the state House map to be continue to be used.

In January, attorneys for Republican leaders of the legislature asked the court, now consisting of a Republican majority, to rehear both cases and correct errors in the court’s previous rulings.

At the time, GOP House Speaker Tim Moore said North Carolina voters “sent a message” on Election Day and had “clearly rejected the judicial activism of the outgoing majority.”

Advocates who challenged the Republican-drawn maps called the GOP petition for the gerrymandering case to be reheard “frivolous.”

“Their petition is nothing more than a cynical attack on judicial independence, our state’s Constitution, and North Carolinians’ long-held freedoms,” Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, said then.

Common Cause asked the court to dismiss the request from Republicans for the case to be reheard, but in Friday’s order, the court dismissed the filing from the group, saying it “grossly violates appellate rules.”

Responding to the court’s decision Friday, Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said the organization was disappointed the court had given GOP lawmakers a chance to argue the case again.

“We maintain that this is politically motivated and outside the scope of what’s permitted by the Constitution,” Klein said. “However, we look forward to arguing this case again before the Court and showing what already has been captured on the record.”

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