North Carolina Supreme Court Rules on Voter ID Constitutional Amendment

The Democrat-controlled Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled along partisan lines that enough electoral districts of the Republican-dominated state Legislature were so racially gerrymandered that the lawmakers may have lacked authority to move two state constitutional amendments forward.

The same court ruled earlier this year that the state electoral maps drawn by the Legislature were “unlawful partisan gerrymanders” that would have unfairly given Republicans an advantage in elections.

The two amendments, the Voter ID Amendment and the Tax Cap Amendment, were approved by the General Assembly and ratified by the voters in 2018. One amendment required that voters present photo identification to vote in person; the other lowered the maximum state income tax from 10 percent to 7 percent.

Lower courts enjoined the two amendments but appeals courts lifted the injunctions.

The 4-3 ruling (pdf) in North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP v. Moore came on Aug. 19. Tim Moore, a Republican, is the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, wrote in the court’s opinion that “the principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule” were at stake in the case.

“The issue is whether legislators elected from unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts possess unreviewable authority to initiate the process of changing the North Carolina Constitution, including in ways that would allow those same legislators to entrench their own power, insulate themselves from political accountability, or discriminate against the same racial group who were excluded from the democratic process by the unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts.”

Although the North Carolina Constitution limits lawmakers’ authority to initiate the amendment process “under these circumstances,” the trial court’s order invalidating the amendments “swept too broadly,” Earls wrote. Because the legislators have authority to act to avoid “chaos and confusion in government,” the trial court ought to have considered whether