NC Supreme Court to rehear voter ID, redistricting
RALEIGH, N.C. — The new Republican majority on North Carolina’s Supreme Court agreed Friday to rehear redistricting and voter identification cases less than two months after the previous court, led by Democrats, issued major opinions going against GOP legislators who had been sued.
The decisions, granted in orders backed by five justices with Republican voter registrations on the seven-member court, mean the issues will return to the court for oral arguments in mid-March. With hopes of getting new results, lawmakers led by House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger asked that the justices rehear the litigation.
The two Democratic justices said the orders stood against more than 200 years of court history in which rehearings have been exceedingly rare. They said it was happening because the court’s partisan makeup had changed. Two new Republican justices took office in early January after winning November elections for seats held by Democrats.
“The legal issues are the same; the evidence is the same; and the controlling law is the same,” Associate Justice Anita Earls wrote in the dissent of the order agreeing to rehear the redistricting case. “The only thing that has changed is the political composition of the Court.”
The GOP lawmakers’ attorneys contend the previous 4-3 Democratic majority got it wrong when they struck down a state Senate map the legislature drew and upheld congressional boundaries drawn by trial judges but opposed by Republicans. They said those same Democrats erred when upholding the invalidation of a 2018 law requiring photo identification to vote when they applied the wrong legal standard.
The rehearings ultimately could lead to new opinions that reinstate the photo ID mandate and strike down precedent from the Supreme Court in February 2022 declaring the state constitution outlawed extensive partisan gerrymandering. That landmark redistricting ruling prevented maps drawn by Republican legislators expected to secure long-term GOP advantages in the General Assembly and within the state’s congressional delegation.
The court said a case can be reheard “if the petitioner makes a satisfactory showing that the opinion may be erroneous.” The legislators’ petition or arguments met the requirements, the orders said.
But Earls wrote Friday’s action marked a “radical break” from the court’s history. Since 1993 alone, she said, rehearing had been allowed in only two cases out of 214 such requests.