So what's the big deal here? The NC Supreme Court struck down North Carolinas voting map as an unconstitutional gerrymander. The case was appealed up to the Supreme Court with a lot of discussion about how disastrous a ruling here might be. The make up of the NC Supreme Court changed last month with Republicans taking the majority on the court. The plaintiffs who were trying to preserve the gerrymander filed for a rehearing. Nothing has changed except the composition of the court. Today the court granted a rehearing. So what's the balance here? The downside is this is radical and democracy destroying. The upshot is that maybe SCOTUS will delay a ruling and dismiss the case as moot when these partisan hacks overturn themselves. That'll at least reduce the risk that they instead deliver a radical ruling that applies more broadly.
Also of note is yesterday the same group signaled they were going to roll back the right to vote for a group of re-enfranchised felons. Several local court watchers said it felt like they had an agenda that didn't necessarily square with mainstream legal analysis. Sad.
Election Law Blog
On a 5-2 vote along party lines, the North Carolina Supreme Court has granted rehearing to reconsider its decision striking the state’s congressional districts as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders under the state constitution. It is also considering the state districts as well as a separate voter id case; these were each decided just before the partisan majority on the Supreme Court changed. Justice Earl in her dissents calls out the court for granting the unusual rehearing and rejecting Common Cause’s motion to dismiss; the says that this is going to further politicize the judiciary and undermine the legitimacy of the courts.
The court put the congressional districting briefing on a very quick time frame, and it raises the question whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Moore v. Harper could become moot, after a lot of briefing and argument has already been considered by the Supreme Court on the independent state legislature theory.