Following controversial rulings, lawsuit over the very legitimacy of NC's state legislature moving forward again

Judges at multiple levels of the North Carolina courts system have ruled in a longstanding lawsuit that pervasive racial gerrymandering in the 2010s brought into doubt the very legitimacy of the Republican-controlled state legislature. But the case, dormant since 2022, began moving forward again Friday as judges and lawyers began planning its next phase.

The case is called NAACP v. Moore, reflecting the legal battle between the civil rights group and GOP legislative leaders, including House Speaker Tim Moore.

On Friday lawyers for both sides met with the three-judge panel that's set to hear the case to begin planning out a schedule for the new trial. It appears both sides wish to move quickly, promising briefs in the coming week or two, which could then be quickly followed by the trial itself.

And while the lawsuit itself is specifically focused on trying to overturn two constitutional amendments voters passed in 2018 — one approving voter identification requirements, the other banning future legislators from raising income taxes above a certain rate — the philosophical arguments it raised were what generated some of the biggest controversy.

The main argument made by the NAACP and others is that it shouldn't matter that voters approved the constitutional amendments in 2018, since they never should've been allowed on the ballot in the first place. Unlike many other states, North Carolina doesn't let voters petition to put amendments on the ballot. Amendments can only be put on the ballot by a veto-proof majority at the state legislature, requiring at least 60% of all lawmakers to be on board.

The two amendments were — and remain — politically controversial, and passed with Republican support despite overwhelming opposition from Democrats in the legislature. But the district lines used in the 2016 elections, and which created the GOP supermajority that approved the amendments in 2018, were struck down after the elections as unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. Republicans had discriminated against Black voters, judges ruling on that gerrymandering lawsuit found, to prevent more Democrats from being elected to office.

When the legislature was forced to use non-gerrymandered maps in the 2018 elections, Democrats broke the Republican supermajority. But it was too late to block the amendments, which had already passed.

That's where this lawsuit comes in. The legislature couldn't claim to have truly represented the citizens of North Carolina when it proposed the constitutional amendments, the NAACP argued, if it had purposefully diminished the political influence of untold numbers of Black voters.

To the surprise of many political observers, they won: In 2019 Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins, a Democrat, ruled in the NAACP's favor and blocked the amendments from being enforced.

"An illegally constituted General Assembly does not represent the people of North Carolina and is therefore not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s constitution," he wrote.

The case has bounced around in the legal system since then, with all the court rulings reflecting the political leanings of the judges hearing the case. The Republican-led legislature won on its initial appeal, at the Republican-majority N.C. Court of Appeals. But then the Democratic-majority N.C. Supreme Court, in 2022, voted in favor of the NAACP.

That 2022 ruling wasn't the final word, however. The ruling, written by Democratic Justice Anita Earls, sent the case back to trial to answer a few lingering questions, with orders to then come back up the line for a final ruling.