Democracy is “under siege” in North Carolina, according to a legal brief filed by the NAACP alongside a lawsuit against the state’s top Republican lawmakers on Monday. A federal court ruled in 2016 that Republicans unconstitutionally redrew North Carolina voting districts along partisan and racial lines back in 2011, and now Democrats and progressive groups say the GOP is using the legislative supermajority it gained as a result of that illegal gerrymandering to make a boldfaced power grab ahead of the November elections.
The new lawsuit filed Monday by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of a coalition of civil rights and environmental groups targets four constitutional amendments that the Republican-controlled legislature has placed on the November ballot.
One measure would reinstate voter ID requirements in state where a strict voter ID law was struck down in federal court for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision.” Others are written to mislead voters and boost Republican turnout in a swing state that recently elected a Democrat to the governor’s office, according to the complaint.
“Misleading voters to seize power and deny access to the ballot through discriminatory photo voter ID is not only a dangerous threat to our state’s future, it is also illegal,” North Carolina NAACP President Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman said in a statement. “The US Supreme Court limited the powers of this unconstitutional, gerrymandered legislature, and so the legislature must be stopped from carrying out this extraordinary attack.”
Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, recently announced his own lawsuit against two of the proposed amendments to the state’s constitution after the Republican supermajority overrode his veto of a law disbanding a state commission that writes ballot language for such measures. Republican lawmakers have now drafted their own language for six ballot proposals, and Cooper and other critics claim they are written to confuse and mislead voters.
The two ballot measures would alter the balance of power in the state’s government by taking away the governor’s power to appoint judges between elections and appoint and direct members of state executive boards and commissions, and handing that power over to the legislature.
“This is about falsely and unconstitutionally misleading voters and crippling the checks and balances that are the foundation of our democracy,” Cooper said in a statement on Saturday.
Another ballot measure challenged by a coalition of progressive groups would prevent future lawmakers from raising income tax beyond 7 percent, a cap that could limit funding for civil rights enforcement and environmental protections, according to the SELC. The group says Republicans in North Carolina have used their control of the state legislature to erode clean air and water protections and limit funding for environmental enforcement.
While the two measures aimed at curbing Cooper’s power would make big changes to the structure of North Carolina’s government, the proposal to enshrine a voter ID requirement in the state constitution is generating national controversy due to the state’s history of voter suppression. Voter ID laws have been used across the country to suppress lower-income voters and voters of color. A federal court struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law in 2016 after ruling that it unfairly targeted marginalized voters, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case last year.
“It all started with the racial gerrymandering,” said Kym Hunter, the SELC attorney who filed the lawsuit, in an interview with Truthout.
After riding the Tea Party wave into power, Republican state lawmakers began redrawing voting districts in North Carolina in 2011 that helped them gain a supermajority in the state legislature in later elections. The GOP is now using the same supermajority to place the proposed amendments to the state constitution on the ballot.
The NAACP and other groups challenged the gerrymandering in court, and in 2016 a federal three-judge panel declared that race was a “predominate factor” in the redrawing of 28 districts, a violation of the voting rights act.
“For seven years we’ve actually all been living in a state where voices have been suppressed,” Hunter said, “and during that time this unconstitutionally constituted body has taken every step it can to enlarge its own power and take power away from the governor and the attorney general.”
State lawmakers were ordered to redraw 117 districts as a result of the ruling striking down the gerrymandered electoral map, but Hunter said Republicans dragged their feet to delay implementation of new maps. The new maps go into effect during the November election, when anti-Trump energy among Democrats and swing voters threatens their stranglehold over the state legislature.
Hunter said the Republicans in North Carolina know they could lose their supermajority in the legislature once the new, legal electoral maps go into effect, and their proposals to amend the state constitution are a “last-ditch attempt” to hold on to power.
“So many of their laws that have been passed have been struck down by the judiciary, so they have now attempted to take over the judiciary, too, in a number of ways, including one of these amendments that would put judicial appointments in the hands of the general assembly rather than the governor,” Hunter said.
The NAACP, SELC and other groups are asking a state court to prevent Republican lawmakers from placing their proposed constitutional amendments on the November ballot, and a hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy