Republicans in NCGA hoping right-wing state Supreme Court will throw out decisions on redistricting, voter ID

In an entirely unsurprising move, Republican leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly have requested that the newly-conservative state Supreme Court throw out last year’s decision on redistricting and voter ID.

Last year, the state Supreme Court’s rulings struck down a voter ID law as racially discriminatory and redistricting maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. These rulings were written and approved by a four-member Democratic majority on the seven-member Supreme Court. 

After November’s election, the court now has a 5-2 Republican majority.

North Carolina Republicans have been pushing voter ID laws and racially gerrymandered maps for more than a decade. In 2016, a federal appeals court ruled against one version of the Republican-backed law — stating that it had targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

House Speaker Tim Moore was the primary sponsor of a 2018 voter ID law that was struck down by a state court because it “was motivated at least in part by an unconstitutional intent to target African American voters.”

Despite courts repeatedly finding that the voter ID laws and redistricting maps violate voters’ constitutional rights and are designed to help the GOP, Republicans continue to pursue these tactics in order to stay in power. 

“This petition is another example of legislative leadership stopping at nothing to infringe on the right of African Americans to vote freely in North Carolina,” Jeff Loperfido, interim chief counsel of Voting Rights at the Southern Coalition, said in a statement. 

With a request to overturn the original ruling, state Republicans are positioning themselves to win seats through egregious discriminatory voting maps that will go unchallenged due to the Republican majority on the high court.