The North Carolina Supreme Court issued two important rulings in voting rights cases Friday, on gerrymandering and voter ID. Both rulings found that Republican lawmakers had acted unconstitutionally to diminish the influence of Democratic voters — by passing a voter ID law with rules that intentionally discriminated against Black voters, and by redrawing the state’s political districts in such a way that rendered many Democrats’ votes essentially pointless in races for Congress and the state legislature. “The right to vote is a fundamental right, preservative of all other rights.
If the right to vote is undermined, it renders illusory all ‘other rights, even the most basic,’” Justice Anita Earls wrote in the voter ID case, quoting from a civil rights case from 1964.
Both rulings were 4-3 decisions, purely along party lines with all the court’s Democrats in the majority and all the Republicans dissenting.
They came at the last minute for the voting rights activists who won the cases, since in January the court will switch to a Republican majority. GOP judges swept all of this year’s statewide midterm elections.
The court’s Democratic majority employed a rarely used procedural move to fast-track these and a few other high-profile political cases, The News & Observer reported earlier this year. While the court didn’t explain its reasoning for the move, it ensured they were argued before the elections and could be ruled on by the end of the year in case the balance of power on the court flipped.
“The foundational democratic principles of equality and popular sovereignty enshrined in our Constitution’s Declaration of Rights vest in the people of this state the fundamental right to vote on equal terms,” Justice Robin Hudson wrote in the ruling on the gerrymandering case.