Alexander H. Jones | The NCGOP wants the US Supreme Court to defend gerrymandering in NC

Jubilant at holding the reigns of power, North Carolina Republicans’ loonier members claimed the right to nullify Supreme Court decisions. A Trump presidency later, such hostility has given way to a supreme confidence that the Court will act as a Republican ally. That’s the only possible interpretation of state House Speaker Tim Moore’s assurance that the GOP may appeal their redistricting case to the United States Supreme Court. Two branches of government, at two different levels of authority, are working hand in glove to solidify Republican minority rule.

The GOP clearly anticipated defeat at the hands of North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled Supreme Court. Their charges of partisanship were laughable given that it was Republicans who made Supreme Court elections partisan in the first place. Republicans wanted more, not less, partisanship on the Court when they believed party ID would help their cause, and now that the voters have opted for divided government, they want strict reticence from the Justices. It’s the kind of opportunism we expect from the NCGOP.

Republicans attempted through their mouthpiece at Carolina Journal to intimidate SCONC away from ruling the GOP’s district maps as unconstitutional. Their gambit failed. And it failed not because a majority of North Carolina Justices are Democrats but because the maps were obscene. North Carolina Democrats won the popular vote for United States House in 2020. The maps drawn by Republicans, however, would have resulted in GOPers attaining at least 10 out of the state’s 14 Congressional seats and possibly as many as 11. Only one seat was remotely competitive, and observers can rest assured that Republicans went to the full length of extremism to quash competition literally everywhere else in the state.

So. The North Carolina Supreme Court gave our democracy a reprieve. What is a Republican gerrymandering honcho to do? Go to the Supreme Court of the United States for a second chance at defending their oligarchical aspirations. After all, SCOTUS just ruled, in a decision so anti-democratic even right-wing John Roberts joined the dissent, that Alabama is not obligated to maintain just two districts where African Americans have a chance of election candidates of their choice. Chief Justice Roberts has been obsessed with gutting the Voting Rights Act since he was a young attorney in the Reagan administration–and even he could not conscience a ruling that one of the most racist states in the country can imposed racism on its Black minority.

North Carolina Republicans, then, are confident there’s a good chance that the U.S. Supreme Court will overrule the judgment of North Carolina Justices and let the gerrymandered maps stand. This is yet another case of hypocrisy from the wingers who have always cried States’ Rights! When federal judges overruled North Carolina’s homophobic Amendment One, NCGOP leaders were filled with outrage that the federal judiciary would interfere with the affairs of the state. But in a sense, their appeal to SCOTUS on gerrymandering is like the “preemption” they have practiced in banning, bullying, and serially overruling progressive policies at the local level. Their goal is right-wing hegemony with no challenges from Democrats. The U.S. Supreme Court may give it to them.