Raleigh, N.C. – State Republican lawmakers in North Carolina appealed a Wake County Superior Court judge’s order issued last week in NAACP v. Moore that invalidated the voice of more than 2 million voters who supported voter ID and a lower tax cap in the state constitution.
Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) said legislators filed the appeal on behalf of North Carolina voters whose voices were invalidated by a court order:
“More than two million North Carolinians had their votes suppressed on critical issues of election integrity and the income tax cap for their families,” Moore said.
“The Court of Appeals should reverse this outrageous decision as soon as possible to restore the people’s confidence that their voices matter and cannot be invalidated by a single judge who disagrees with their decision.”
Lawmakers assert in their appeal that “precedent from the United States Supreme Court and lower federal and state courts universally weights against Plaintiff’s usurper theory.”
“The trial court became perhaps the first court in the country to invalidate legislation based on the theory that a state’s legislative branch was made up of so-called usurpers who could not pass valid laws,” they wrote in the appeal.
“Numerous courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have examined the issue and declined to find that a “usurper legislature” exists or cannot act. The trial court, however, did not rely on precedent….”
“In fact, the North Carolina Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, and other courts have considered challenges to laws based on claims of improperly constituted legislatures, but neither Plaintiffs nor Defendants has found a single case in which a law was struck down on such grounds…”
“Although what the trial court found to be “an illegally constituted General Assembly” passed 146 laws in 2018, including six laws proposing constitutional amendments that were presented to North Carolina voters for consideration and numerous other laws passed with the same three-fifths margin, the trial court held only that Session Laws 2018-119 and 2018-128 were void. The Order provides no manageable standards to determine what laws are void and what laws are valid…”
“The 22 February 2019 Order provides no guidance as to why other laws are not also void…”
“A three-fifths majority of both houses is also required to override a gubernatorial veto. N.C. Const. art. II, § 22. The General Assembly has overridden numerous gubernatorial vetoes since 5 June 2017…”
“Because the trial court focused on the ends in this case—voiding constitutional amendments—the means are substantially unclear…”
Read more from the appeal here.