Supreme Court Sends Elections Board Case Back to Trial Court | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was created by the staff for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

    Less than a week after hearing arguments in a lawsuit pitting Gov. Roy Cooper against the General Assembly, the N.C. Supreme Court has ordered a three-judge panel to reconsider the case. The governor supports the decision.

    The state's highest court also has ruled that county elections boards with one missing member still can conduct business if the two remaining members reach unanimous agreement on decisions they need to make during the ongoing municipal election season.

    The three-judge panel had dismissed Cooper's complaint because it ruled it had no jurisdiction to deal with the governor's complaints.

    "[W]ithout determining that we lack the authority to reach the merits of plaintiff's claims, we conclude that the proper administration of justice would be best served in the event that we allowed the panel, in the first instance, to address the merits of plaintiff's claims before undertaking to address them ourselves," said the order signed by Justice Michael Morgan, the high court's newest member.

    "We are pleased that the Supreme Court has acted quickly so that the three-judge panel now has the opportunity to get this right on the merits of the case," Cooper spokesman Ford Porter responded in a prepared statement.

    The Supreme Court calls on the three-judge panel to issue a new order within 60 days. The new order should explain the basis for its earlier decision and address the merits of Cooper's complaint. Then the case will return to the Supreme Court for a final ruling.

    The Cooper v. Berger case deals with a dispute over the Republican-led General Assembly's new law merging state elections and ethics boards into a new eight-member group with equal Republican and Democratic membership. Cooper's lawyers argue that the change from a five-member election board with three members of Cooper's Democratic Party represents an unconstitutional infringement on the governor's power to "control" the elections board's makeup.

    The law calls on Cooper to appoint all eight members of the new board from lists of candidates submitted by the two major parties. Cooper has refused to make the appointments while fighting the law in court.

    One consequence of a state elections board with no members is that no one has power to appoint new members to existing three-member county elections boards. This has left some counties in limbo in dealing with current local elections. If those counties have an elections board vacancy, state law blocks the other two members from meeting.

    "Until this case is resolved by the Court, any county board of elections with a vacancy reducing its membership to two members - such that the board cannot meet quorum requirements ... - may meet and conduct business ... with a quorum and unanimous assent of two members," according to the new court order.

    A date has not been set for the three-judge panel's next hearing in the case.