Editorial: Special Session Should NOT be used for Court-Packing

The special legislative session next week is supposed to be focused on Hurricane Matthew relief. But McCrory has the potential to turn it into a session that also includes adding two new justices to the state Supreme Court in an undemocratic court-packing scheme. McCrory will be remembered for HB2 but he has a chance to end his term doing the right thing: focusing solely on Hurricane Matthew during the special session.

From The Winston-Salem Journal:

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has called a special legislative session next week to consider a Hurricane Matthew relief package. That’s needed. But what’s not needed is for the session to take up packing the state Supreme Court.

McCrory finally and graciously conceded the governor’s race Monday to his Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper. McCrory had persisted in dragging out the race with groundless contentions of voting irregularities on the part of county boards of election ruled by his own party. Saturday, he even called on the State Bureau of Investigation to probe some voting in Bladen County, even though the GOP-dominated state-elections board had rejected a complaint made about voting there.

The last thing we needed from the governor who shamelessly signed the state’s 2013 voter suppression bill into law, most of which the Fourth Circuit of Appeals rightly struck down this past summer, was another voter-suppression push.

So his concession Monday was welcome.

Now, he can continue to salvage his legacy with the special legislative session. There is talk that, in addition to the governor’s righteous cause of flood relief, legislators may try to add two seats to the state Supreme Court to address a Democratic win that tipped that court in the Democratic favor.

Legislators would be within their state constitutional rights. But they would subvert the will of the voters.