Tag Archives: North Carolina Supreme Court

Why Elections Matter

Posted on by

In North Carolina, judges are elected. In the last election in North Carolina, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped from a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority. The consequences of that election are already becoming apparent.

The Epoch Times reported the following on Saturday:

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday handed a victory to the state’s Republican legislators by siding with a petition that asked the high court to rehear cases involving election maps and voter identification laws.

In a vote along partisan lines, the state’s Supreme Court voted 5–2 to rehear the two cases in March—ones that North Carolina’s Republican legislature had previously lost.

Two Republicans running for seats on the North Carolina Supreme Court in the November midterm election beat their Democrat opponents, flipping the composition of the court red for the first time since 2016.

The partisan switch of the court revived Republican hopes to revisit the cases.

In one of the cases, Holmes v. Moore, the state Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 16, 2022, to strike down a law requiring photo voter identification. The justification for that decision was supposed discrimination against minorities.

Justice Trey Allen wrote in an order Friday that the criteria for adjudicating the request by GOP legislative leaders for the case to be reheard have been met.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michael Morgan questioned whether the decision to rehear the case would call into question the court’s impartiality.

Does Justice Morgan believe the court was being impartial when it threw out the legal redistricting by the mostly Republican legislature and a Constitutional Amendment voted for by the majority of North Carolina voters?

The article concludes:

A separate filing by Republican lawmakers argued that the correct legal standard was not applied in a decision that the state Supreme Court upheld on voter ID.

“Holmes was wrongly decided based on a predetermined outcome. We now have a chance to right this wrong and deliver on voter ID, which the voters of this state overwhelmingly support,” said Sam Hayes, general counsel for the House speaker, according to Spectrum News 1.

For more than a decade, North Carolina Republicans have been seeking to pass a law that would require voters to present photo identification. The state legislature passed voter ID laws in 2013, but they were struck down by a federal court. A similar law adopted in 2018 was struck down by the state Supreme Court in December.

The citizens voted. Their voices need to be heard.

 

Follow The Money

Posted on by

Abortion may become the cigarette smoking issue of the 2020’s (see article here). Obviously, Planned Parenthood will do everything possible to prevent that from happening–abortion is where they make their money. On Thursday, The Conservative Review posted an article about one of Planned Parenthood’s moves to protect their income source.

The article reports:

On Thursday, Planned Parenthood announced its plan to invest $5 million in the North Carolina midterm elections to back pro-abortion Democrat nominees.

Planned Parenthood Votes and Planned Parenthood Action PAC North Carolina aim to use the funds for ads, mailings, phone banks, and canvassing in 14 legislative swing districts.

Deputy director of Planned Parenthood Action PAC North Carolina Emily Thompson stressed that the organization’s goal is to prevent a Republican supermajority in the general assembly. She said that the campaign is focusing recourses on five Senate races.

“If we don’t elect reproductive rights champions in five key state Senate races, an anti-abortion supermajority will have the votes to ban abortion in North Carolina,” Thompson stated. “And if we don’t defend two critical North Carolina Supreme Court seats, we will lose our last line of defense against restrictive state laws designed to rob us of our right to make our own health care decisions.”

The wording here is important. No one is robbing anyone of the right to make their own health care decisions. If you don’t want to have a child, don’t engage in the activities that cause pregnancy. It’s that simple. No one is forcing you to get pregnant. What the limits on abortions are doing is protecting the life of the unborn. When abortion was made legal in January 1973, medical science did not have the knowledge of unborn development that they have now. Now it is possible to keep a baby born months early alive with minimal negative consequences. In 1973, an early birth often resulted in permanent negative health issues.

I have seen the ads for the Supreme Court seats on television. The ads promote the fear of losing women’s rights to health care. What about the baby’s right to health care? It is time to look at the scientific advancements made regarding unborn babies and base our decisions on current information. It is a child from the time it is conceived, so the question is, “Do we want to be a culture that says it is okay to kill a child?”

Working Hard To Ignore The Will Of The Voters

Posted on by

On September 8th, The Carolina Journal posted an article about some recent shenanigans in the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 2018, North Carolina voters passed a referendum to require voter ID. Logically that should have been the end of it–the voters have spoken, the people in charge need to listen. Well, it wasn’t the end of it. Later that year, the North Carolina legislature passed (and overrode a governor’s veto) another voter ID law. The law passed by the legislature was struck down in 2019 by a District Court. In 2020, the federal appeals court overrode the lower court’s decision allowing voter ID in North Carolina. As things stand now, the 2022 elections will require voter ID. Actually voter ID was used in one North Carolina primary election while the legal maneuvering was going on. That election showed increased voter turnout (disproving the argument that voter ID laws decrease turnout), and made the job of the people handing out ballots much easier. Voter ID made the election run much more smoothly. So where are we now?

The Carolina Journal reports:

In an astonishing and unprecedented power grab that will overturn 200 years of case law and prior precedents, Democrats on the state Supreme Court are preparing to disqualify and remove two duly-elected Republican Supreme Court justices from a case so they can nullify voters’ decision to amend the Constitution.

The case is NAACP v. Moore and the state Supreme Court’s Democrats are trying to remove two Republican members from the bench, so a new temporary four-to-one Democrat majority can erase two constitutional amendments – the cap on income tax, and the voter I.D. requirement – which were overwhelmingly passed by more than four million votes.

In a plan already underway, Democrats Anita Earls, Robin Hudson, and Mike Morgan would conspire to remove the justices while allowing Associate Justice Jimmy Ervin to vote AGAINST the move because he is the one Democrat currently on the court who will face re-election in 2022.

This is not just an inside-baseball rumor. It is in motion. On July 23, 2021, lawyers for the NAACP filed a motion to have two Republican members, Justice Tamara Barringer and Justice Phil Berger, Jr., both sitting members of the state Supreme Court, removed in the case.

The lawyers argue that they have a conflict of interest because Berger is the son of Senate Leader Phil Berger and Barringer was a lawmaker during the time these constitutional amendments passed the legislature by a 3/5ths majority.

After a while you have to wonder why Democrats are so threatened by voter ID. Picture identification is required for a lot of activities not related to voting–cashing a check, boarding a plane, entering a federal or state building, opening a bank account, buying a car, etc. There are very few people among us that do not have some sort of picture identification. Also, I believe that the voter ID law makes photo ID’s available at no cost. The only reason to oppose voter ID laws is that they make it more difficult to cheat. Do the Democrats think we are too stupid to figure that out?