What To Know About The Election Map Court Ruling | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Donna Martinez.

    It's a huge court win from a bipartisan panel of judges. On Tuesday, a unanimous three-judge panel (2 Republicans and 1 Democrat) upheld North Carolina's newly drawn election maps for legislative and congressional districts. As Carolina Journal reports:

    The 260-page order also grants the State Board of Elections' request to resume candidate filing for 2022 elections on Feb. 24. Filing for all state and local offices will restart on that date and last through noon March 4.

    "These consolidated cases present this Court with the unique challenge of balancing the competing interests of fairness, the role of the judiciary, statutory and constitutional construction, the interpretation of prior court rulings, and good old fashion common sense," according to the opinion from Judges Graham Shirley and Nathaniel Poovey, both Republicans, and Dawn Layton, a Democrat.

    "Sometimes, courts are required to make decisions that are not popular, but because judges take an oath to uphold the law, those rulings are mandated," they added. "And sometimes, redress of a perceived wrong does not lie with the judiciary, but rather, with one of the other co-equal branches of government."