The North Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed the state’s March primaries to allow more time for state courts to review and rule on two anti-gerrymandering lawsuits challenging Republicans’ newly drawn district maps.
The adults in the room?
“The Democrats on the Supreme Court want districts that elect more Democrats, so they’re blocking every election in the state until they get their way,” Hise said without a hint of irony."
They don’t understand something as simple as irony.
Hopefully, some Supreme Justice?
That really should read “The Democrats on the Supreme Court want fair elections that will elect a representative set of electors that matches the even split of NC instead of the unbalanced set of Republicans (in more ways that one) that we want to send to DC, and that’s just not fair!!!”. Don’t forget the stomping of feet and shaking of fists to get the right image.
“The Democrats on the Supreme Court want districts that elect more Democrats, so they’re blocking every election in the state until they get their way,” Hise said without a hint of irony.
He got them right there, the Justices will be attacked as partisans in the media and will start receiving death threats from the stormtroopers, until they relent and let the republicans have it their way.
“One of the Republican defendants in the litigation, state Rep. Ralph Hise (R), accused the Supreme Court, which is overseen by a Democratic majority, of political bias.”
Hise: “I’m shocked — shocked — to find politics going on in here!”
Croupier: “Your gerrymandered maps, sir.”
Hise: “Oh, thank you very much.”
Hise said without a hint of irony.
The last hint of GOP irony died off when Lee Atwater took to the stage with B.B. King. At this point, we should really stop looking.
One of the Republican defendants in the litigation, state Rep. Ralph Hise (R), in a fit of blatantly obvious irony and psychological projection, accused the Supreme Court, which is overseen by a Democratic majority, of political bias.
FTFY
A few deep background comments about the underlying politics, procedural quirks and culture here.
First, North Carolina theoretically has a single court, the General Court of Justice with an appellate division and a trial division. The appellate division consists of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. The trial division consists of the Superior Court, which handles civil actions over 25k and major felonies and the District Court which does arraignments, tries civil actions <25k and family law cases.
In 2018, pursuant to state law, a three judge panel of Superior Court judges in Wake County (i.e. Raleigh) ruled that partisan gerrymandering is forbidden by the state constitution. The Republican General Assembly, because it was 2018 so what the hell, drew maps that gave up a few of the state and federal seats they grabbed in 2010 rather than risk having the Supreme Court, then 6-1 Democratic, turn the ruling into binding precedent.
In 2021, buoyed by the SCOTUS ruling that partisan gerrymandering is AOK under the Federal constitution did an even more extreme and ridiculous gerrymander than in 2010, managing to squeeze Democrats down to two seats out of 14, as opposed to 3 out of 13 in 2011 in the House and gave the same treatment to the General Assembly seats. They even broke up the black majority competitive seat the federal courts made them put back in in the middle of the last decade.
Their theory appears to have been, “fuck it, who cares if it’s legal if we’ll probably get three cycles out of it before it is tossed?”)
One of the two actions on appeal was filed as a “continuation” of the 2018 action, the other is a fresh lawsuit. The Superior Court panel they drew for that action went 2-1 against them on their motion to enjoin candidate filing and elections pending litigation. I don’t know who was on that panel or their party.
One thing you should know, however, was that after the 2010 and 2012 disasters, Republicans did the following: 1) abolished our model “Clean Elections” public financing for judicial elections and invited in a shit ton of outside money; 2) passed a law that said the name of the candidate in our non-partisan judicial races who was of the same part as the governor (then grinning Republican Kochpuppet shitstain Pat McCrory) came first on the ballot; 3) then when that didn’t work out for them, they passed a law abolishing non-partisan judicial races altogether.
Then just to add to the fun, they took a sudden interest in “judicial reform” and passed a law giving Supreme Court justices the option of choosing to run in a simple retention election and, if he won it, avoid a competitive election altogether. This “reform” was widely recognized as violating the state constitution. They conspicuously did not extend this “reform” to the Court of Appeals. Because, at the time, the only supreme court justice up for reelection was the Republican chief justice. while Democrats held the majority of the Court of Appeals seats. The then-chief justice lost significant respect by taking advantage of this law, which ultimately led to the supreme court (the chief justice not included) ruling it unconstitutional. He lost the next election.
More elections happened, and, surprise, surprise Democrats lost most of their Court of Appeals races, which became 10-5 Republican. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court went from 6-1 Democratic to 4-3 Democratic.
So that’s the politics. Here’s the cultural part. Lawyers hereabouts refer to the Court of Appeals as “the Court of Affirmance.” It’s not impossible to win an appeal there by any means, but most of them have historically been former trial judges who hated getting reversed, and you can tell. The Supreme Court, by contrast has been referred to as “The Court for the Admonishment and Correction of the Court of Appeals.” The NCSC mostly deals with appeals it’s required to take-death penalty cases and 2-1 rulings from the COA. When it takes a case it doesn’t have to take, it usually means COA uppitness is about to get a comeuppance. My point here being that the NCSC-even though it’s usually made up of former COA judges-has a bit of a jaundiced eye for COA cases.
Here’s the procedural part. In 2016, appellate rules committee of the state bar proposed a new rule that would, for the first time, allow the Court of Appeals to sit en banc to resolve conflicts in Court of Appeals precedent (which mostly happens more by accident than design) and to hear matters of “exceptional importance.” Many lawyers tried to invoke this rule, but none succeeded until August of this year when the first petition for en banc rehearing was granted.
And then, four months later, the 10-5 Republican COA granted only it’s second en banc petition to undo the COA panel’s reversal of the Superior Court panel that denied injunctive relief. Anyone who thinks this extraordinary action did not instantly grab the intention of the the Supreme Court has not been paying attention to the lesson.
So now, with this order, the NCSC has completely cut the COA out of the loop and left itself ample time to deal with any MAGA shenanigans by the three judge superior court panel assigned to try the case.
It’s an order signed by the clerk on behalf of the entire court. The NCSC does not do much shadow docket nonsense like SCOTUS has descended into under Roberts, so we don’t know how the three Republican judges felt, but wouldn’t be surprised if even they agreed they needed to keep the COA out of this one.
GREAT!
I was hoping AG James would reconsider her run for governor! She’s got a lot of work to do as NYAG!
Keep up the good work AG James!!!
Somehow I don’t get a good feeling hearing this is the SC Supreme Court. There is no way I would expect them to uphold voting rights any more than the US Supreme Court.
It will be nice to see some constitutional analysis of just how far legislatures can go to tip the balance in favor if one party. The outcome probably depends on just how blatant the racial component is. Here’s hoping the court can attract at least one of the Republicans if they want to tamp this version of the electoral map down. As a lawyer who went into the profession because I thought it could make a beneficial difference in people’s lives, I still cling to the notion that the Supreme Court is the outlier and there is still hope for some lower and state courts to actually act like courts should. Sigh.
Does the state constitution prohibition on partisan gerrymanders apply to drawing federal districts?
This is why we come toTPM.
When the Democrats gerrymander it’s moving the lines around to help out one subgroup or another. When the Goppers do it they want to change everything and turn everything into a death match winner take all losers get salted.
But winner takes all is cancer and kills the host.
Cancer took my Mom, my Mother in law, my Dog, a part of me.
I don’t like cancer. I would like it to be rightminded from our society. How? I don’t know, but if the trumpers keep dying from covid it may just be legislatively possible to just do it.
Thanks very much for that.
The only question I have is how any Democrats ended up in the Supreme Court, let alone having a majority? Seems an oversight from the GQP.
Can’t gerrymander a state’s borders. (actually, you can, but you can do it only once and that is immediately before the state is admitted to the union)
Thanks for that wonderful view from the inside of what is going on in the NC courts.
This morning, one of the NPR programs I was listening to (I forget which one) was interviewing Barton Gellman about his article in the current issue of Atlantic entitled “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun.” In the course of the interview, he said that sadly, this country now has only one party that believes in democracy. And that is very much illustrated by what you have related here.
OT. I lost 4 dogs to cancer in 5 years. My dog Ricky had a sarcoma removed in February and a mast cell tumor last month. No spreading of the cancers so far. Fingers crossed.
Yup. That’s what the case was about. It’s how I finally got out of dear, sweet Ginny Foxx’s district.