Republican NC lawmakers violated constitution in effort to strip election powers from Democratic governor, court rules

The North Carolina legislature's most recent attempt to take away the governor's influence over elections is unconstitutional, a trial court panel ruled Wednesday.

The ruling focused on a provision of a new law that transferred power to appoint members to the State Board of Elections from the governor to the state auditor. The law was passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in December, shortly before new Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and new State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, were sworn into office.

The effort was among the latest attempts by GOP legislative leaders to give their party more control over election rules in North Carolina, where that power is vested in the governor — an office Democrats keep winning. So far, the legislature's efforts have all been defeated in court or at the ballot box by voters.

Critics of the new law, which also stripped powers from other state offices won by Democrats in 2024, have called the wide-ranging legislation a politically motivated power grab. Several other pieces of the law have also been challenged as unconstitutional, in separate lawsuits.

A judicial panel, in a bipartisan ruling, said the election changes outlined in Senate Bill 382 violated the state constitution. Giving control of elections to Boliek instead of Stein is clearly unconstitutional, they wrote, based on not just the constitution itself but also based on the other recent lawsuits Republicans have lost in similar efforts.

"Senate Bill 382 contravenes the plain text of the Constitution, constitutional history and context, and binding Supreme Court precedent," the judges wrote in the 2-1 ruling.

The order was handed down by superior court judges Ed Wilson, a Democrat, and Lori Hamilton, a Republican. A third judge, Republican Andrew Womble, dissented. All three judges were picked to hear the case by Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican. In North Carolina, trials over constitutional issues are often held by three-judge panels instead of a single judge.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, told WRAL he would appeal the ruling. Boliek is an executive branch elected official just like Stein, Berger said, and the court was wrong to rule that powers can't be transfered from one office to the other. He also accused the elections board, under Democratic control, of behaving too politically.

"The Board of Elections functioned in a highly partisan manner during the [Roy] Cooper administration, with handpicked partisan Democrats running elections and rewriting rules," Berger said. "There’s no indication it will change under the Stein administration."

Stein, however, said the court was right to reject what he called a "power grab" by the state GOP: "The North Carolina Constitution puts the Governor in charge of executing the law," Stein wrote on social media. "That’s what the voters elected me to do, so that’s what I’ll do."

In North Carolina, each county has an elections board to run its local elections and make administrative decisions such as where to put early voting sites. Those boards all report to the State Board of Elections, which settles disputes arising from the counties, makes statewide election rules and has other powers such as investigating claims of campaign finance violations or voter fraud.

Under state law, all of those board have five members. Three of the seats go to the political party of the governor, and the other two seats go to the next-largest political party. Ever since 2017, when Democrat Roy Cooper became governor, that has meant Democrats have had a 3-2 majority on the state and county election boards.

Republicans attempted to change the rules before Cooper was sworn in, similar to the more recent law targeting Stein before he was sworn in, but that effort was later ruled unconstitutional. Republican lawmakers then proposed amending the state constitution to accomplish those goals, but that proposal was defeated in the 2018 election after just 38.1% of voters backed the idea.

In 2024 Republicans proposed yet another change to the elections board, giving the legislature power to appoint an even number of Democrats and Republicans to the election boards, a move critics said appeared intended to lead to ties on contentious decisions, which would then be broken by the legislature. That law was blocked as likely unconstitutional, but before a full trial could be held, Boliek won the election for auditor and lawmakers wrote a new law giving him power over elections, which has now also been blocked as unconstitutional.