By Cash Michaels –
According to observers, there are strong indications that the court is prepared to erase several of the important decisions made by the 4-3 Democratic majority court last term.
In his recent analysis of the new Republican court majority, Irving Joyner, professor of law at North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham said: “We can expect this newly minted North Carolina Supreme Court to reverse the recent voting rights and voter protection opinions which were recently decided by that court. These politically motivated reversals will be unprecedented in North Carolina law and cement the present Supreme Court, which will be in power for the next eight years.”
The GOP majority court voted to rehear two important voting rights cases already decided just a few months ago.
The first voting rights case to be reheard will be Holmes v. Moore, where the high court on Dec. 16, 2022 struck down the 2018 Voter I.D. law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly because it was ruled racially discriminatory and thus, unconstitutional. Observers say after rehearing arguments next month, expect the new, conservative Supreme Court majority to rule that the 2018 voter ID is not racially discriminatory—primarily because Republican legislative leaders say it is not.
[Editor’s note: one of the new justices, Philip Berger, Jr., is the son of NC Senate President pro tempore Phil Berger, who is one of the plaintiff’s in the rehearing case. Despite that first-degree relationship, the justice refuses to recuse himself from voting on his own father’s case.]
Also, expect the same predicted outcome by the High Court after rehearing Harper v. Hall in March. On December 16th, whereby the NC Supreme Court agreed with plaintiffs that the second version of a 2020 congressional redistricting map, in addition to the state Senate voting map, “violates the state’s constitutional guarantees…
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