Supreme Court Issues Brutal Takedown of 4th Circuit Call for Special Elections | Eastern North Carolina Now

Press Release:

    Raleigh, NC     Today the US Supreme Court issued a brutal takedown of the ruling of the three judge pannel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the terms of duly elected members of the North Carolina General Assembly and hold special elections this year.

    "Today the Supreme Court affirmed what we already knew, that the 4th Circuit needs better judges. Holding special off-year elections would have disenfranchised millions of voters who cast votes in November of 2016," said NCGOP Chairman Robin Hayes. "Approximately 4.5 million citizens cast votes for the General Assembly in 2016. The special election would have thrown those votes into the garbage can and replaced them with maybe 10% of that total. While we still contend that the North Carolina General Assembly drew fair and legal legislative maps that followed all precedent and court direction available at the time the maps were drawn, the caviler way that the 4th Circuit ordered a new election, discounting millions of votes, was an affront to democracy. We are glad the Supreme Court obliterated this partisan ruling, which would have allowed Democrats to deceitfully seize elections they did not win at the ballot box." - NCGOP Chairman Robin Hayes

    The Supreme Court chastised Judge Wynn for not considering, "the extent of the likely disruption to the ordinary processes of governance if early elections are imposed, and the need to act with proper judicial restraint when intruding on state sovereignty."

    Further, the court added:

    "Rather than undertaking such an analysis in this case, the District Court addressed the balance of equities in only the most cursory fashion. As noted above, the court simply announced that "[w]hile special elections have costs," those unspecified costs "pale in comparison" to the prospect that citizens will be "represented by legislators elected pursuant to a racial gerrymander."

    "That minimal reasoning would appear to justify a special election in every racial-gerrymandering case-a result clearly at odds with our demand for careful case-specific analysis. For that reason, we cannot have confidence that the court adequately grappled with the interests on both sides of the remedial question before us. And because the District Court's discretion "was barely exercised here," its order provides no meaningful basis for even deferential review.

    Click here to read the Supreme Court's ruling.

• Contact: Emily Weeks
•     Emily.Weeks@ncgop.org