The North Carolina Supreme Court has allowed a controversial Republican-backed law — which strips the Democratic governor of power over state election administration and hands it to the Republican state auditor — to take effect.
The ruling comes even after a lower court found the law “unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.”
An appeals court had blocked that ruling. Gov. Josh Stein then asked the Supreme Court to block the appeals court ruling. But the high court ruled 5-2, along party lines, that Stein had failed to show the appeals court abused its discretion.
Still, the Supreme Court didn’t rule on the law’s constitutionality, and its ruling doesn’t end the litigation. The case remains with the appeals court to decide.
The law at issue transfers power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections from the governor to State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican. The board controls how elections are run across North Carolina.
Justice Anita Earls issued a scathing dissent, warning the decision “charts an entirely new allocation of state government power in service of partisan ends.”
“If the voters of North Carolina wanted a Republican official to control the State Board of Elections, they could have elected a Republican Governor,” Earls wrote. “They did not.”
Justice Allison Riggs also dissented, slamming the Court for abandoning a century of precedent.
“The majority is rewriting precedent,” Riggs stated, “and upending 125 years of status quo for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.”