New NC Supreme Court Majority Overturns Prior Majority’s Unconstitutional Interference in Redistricting

Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / May 11, 2023

In a detailed, 146-page opinion by Chief Justice Paul Newby, the newly composed North Carolina state Supreme Court vacated and overturned a prior decision by the same court that was a prime example of political interference by activist judges, who were fully prepared to ignore the law and the constitutional limitations on their authority............ 

In a 4-to-3 decision issued in February 2022, the majority—all judges who had been elected as Democrats—held that partisan gerrymandering violated the free elections, equal protection, free speech, and free assembly clauses of the state constitution, overturning prior precedent cited in the lower court decisions that partisan redistricting did not violate the state constitution and there were no judicially manageable standards in any event...........But something else very important happened in the November elections: Two of the Democrat elected North Carolina justices who were in the original majority were defeated in their reelection bids and were replaced by two Republican judges, swinging the court from a 4-to-3 Democratic majority to a 5-to-2 Republican majority............To Read More....

My Take - The Democrats have practiced blatant partisan redistricting in every state where they had the power to do so, and thought it was just fine and wonderful.  However, what was fine and wonderful when they did it is now "shameful manipulation of fundamental principles of our democracy and the rule of law.”.   

What remarkable hypocrisy and as usual, their hypocrisy is accompanied by vacuous self-righteous indignation.   But their outrageous emotional protestations are meaningless according to the  Constitution, which gives total and complete authority to the state legislatures regarding redistricting.    

While the courts have done so in the past, in point of law, they absolutely have no right to interfere with the legislature's prerogatives on redistricting.  That falls under the purview of state legislatures in that arena, not the judicial or the executive branches.