Today The Wall Street Journal published a response from North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore to the editorial entitled “Scorched Earth Judging in North Carolina.”
The response was published in today’s online edition of The Wall Street Journal and in the October 18, 2021, print edition as “North Carolinians Knew Who They Voted For.”
The full text of the Speaker’s letter as it appeared in The Wall Street Journal is below:
In North Carolina, Let the People Rule
This power grab would call into question the legitimacy of the state Supreme Court and the electoral process.Regarding your editorial “Scorched-Earth Judging in North Carolina” (Oct. 4): When voters elected two new justices to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2020, they did so knowing full well who they were and what their job would be. One is Justice Tamara Barringer, a former state senator. The other is Phil Berger Jr., a former North Carolina Court of Appeals judge who was elevated by the voters to the state’s highest court a full 10 years after his father became president pro tempore of the state Senate.Justices Barringer and Berger Jr. were not elected by the people with the assumption that they would not hear cases involving the constitutionality of our state’s laws. The attempt to disqualify them from hearing cases the voters elected them to hear is a subversion of the will of the people and an insult to every informed voter. It would call into question the legitimacy of the state Supreme Court and do lasting damage to the confidence we have in our electoral process in North Carolina.What is it that the plaintiffs in this case are really trying to accomplish? They are attempting to relitigate elections they couldn’t otherwise win at the ballot box. But do we or do we not trust the voters to know who they are voting for? That is the real question.Raleigh, N.C.Mr. Moore, a Republican, is speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives.