North Carolina GOP can draw limitless gerrymanders after court reverses itself – By Stephen Wolf (Daily Kos) / April 28, 2023
The North Carolina Supreme Court’s new five-member Republican majority gave GOP lawmakers the green light to pass a new round of extreme gerrymanders on Friday when it overturned its own December ruling that had established that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution. The court’s prior Democratic majority had issued that decision, but Republican justices took the unprecedented step of rehearing the case even though the only fact that had changed was that Republicans flipped the court last fall.
In two further decisions handed down Friday, the GOP majority also sided with Republican lawmakers in a pair of voting rights cases that had centered on discrimination against Black voters. In one, the court rescinded another recent state Supreme Court ruling that had invalidated a Republican-backed voter ID law. In the other, it overturned a lower court that had struck down the state’s ban on those with felony convictions voting while on parole or probation; in so doing, it also revived a requirement that all fines and fees be repaid before the restoration of voting rights for affected individuals.
In the redistricting case, North Carolina’s highest court took its cue from an infamous 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision and ruled that judges are not permitted to adjudicate claims of partisan gerrymandering, calling them “political questions” unsuited for the legal system to address because they allegedly lack a “manageable standard” to evaluate them.
