Extreme Supreme court

“We thought they might. We hoped they wouldn’t. Now they have.“

With theses three short sentences, the News and Observer Editorial Board began its April 28 assessment of alarming new developments in NC electoral law. They continued:

“In sweeping blows to democracy in North Carolina, the state Supreme Court’s new Republican majority reversed two rulings by the previous, Democratic-leaning court that upheld fair elections. The majority threw out rulings that had rejected gerrymandered election district maps and found a voter ID law discriminatory against Black voters. The state Supreme Court also reversed a lower court ruling that restored the right to vote for those convicted of felonies once they leave prison or jail. The previous rulings strengthened the ability of the people of North Carolina to express their will through their votes. The reversals — exceedingly rare actions by the state’s highest court — will limit the ability of North Carolinians to affect how their state is governed. The most serious of the reversals — one that effectively sanctions extreme partisan gerrymandering — may well affect how the nation is governed by adding to the Republicans’ thin majority in the U.S. House” (my emphasis).

It is terrifying to me that the highest court in the state has no respect for the rule of law and that they would literally disenfranchise thousands of North Carolinians in what the editorial rightly describes as an exercise of "raw politics."

My book group is currently reading Walk with Me, Kate Clifford Larson's new biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, an excruciatingly detailed report of all the ways that Mississippi's white leadership fought to keep from sharing any power with the 52% of the population that was African American. Describing how the spreading movement to register Black Voters in 1964 led to a surge in membership of the KKK, Larson writes: " Their growing fears over losing political, social and economic power fueled their anger.  They wanted to revert to a time when white supremacy and evangelical Christianity formed a power base." (p. 192)

As I read these words, I thought about how the fear of losing power in the face of a Black President gave rise in 2010 to the Tea party, the corporate funded Red Map Program, and ALEC (described in last month's issue of C2C newsletter), leading to Republican capture of both houses of the General Assembly for the first time in 100 years.  They are not going to allow an expanded franchise and fair maps to take that away from them.  The actions of the State Supreme Court last week reveal how far NC Republicans will go to hold on to power…and how willing they are to manipulate the levers of that power to undermine our public institutions and democracy itself.

I hope we can stop them.

For more information on what we can do together see updates from North Carolina Common Cause and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Special thanks to the News and Observer for making the April 28 editorial accessible and free to all readers.