Weekly Recap: Catch up on the news you missed from 6/25-7/1
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its rulings on redistricting and affirmative action, North Carolina's new abortion law is largely being implemented and state lawmakers advanced a number of bills.
It’s been a hyperactive week here in North Carolina politics. If you’d like to read more in-depth coverage and all 10 of this week’s alerts in full, upgraded memberships are available now through July 5th at a 20% discount.
Without further ado, let’s dive in to the week that was…
SCOTUS decides redistricting, affirmative action cases
There were a pair of big decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court this week. So let’s take them one at a time:
🗳️Redistricting
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling rejecting the independent state legislature theory, which posits that state lawmakers ought to have sole authority to enact congressional voting lines.
Democrats heralded the decision as a victory for voting rights and the future of democracy.
“Today, the Supreme Court rejected the fringe independent state legislature theory that threatened to upend our democracy and dismantle our system of checks and balances,” former President Barack Obama said in a statement shortly after the high court’s decision. “This ruling rejects the far-right theory that threatened to undermine our democracy, and makes clear that courts can continue defending voters' rights—in North Carolina and in every state.”
The decision did indeed deal a blow nationally to Republicans that sought to expand their political clout. However, the high court’s ruling doesn’t change the numerous near-term hurdles for Democrats in North Carolina.
Last year, North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled Supreme Court held that partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution. The justices ordered new congressional and legislative voting maps be implemented, and a lower court ultimately drew a congressional map of its own to be used only for the 2022 election. The lower court also accepted legislative maps redrawn by the General Assembly.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to address whether the prior liberal-majority North Carolina Supreme Court overstepped its authority in the redistricting process, but affirmed that state courts have a right to oversee the drawing of voting maps.
Even so, Democrats have little hope of seeing what they’d consider fair maps in the 2024, 2026 or 2028 elections. Why? Because the 2022 midterms enabled Republicans to turn a 4-3 Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court into a 5-2 GOP majority.
Barring unforeseen departures on the bench, the earliest Democrats could retake control is 2029. And even that is contingent on them not losing each of their two current seats, which will be up for grabs in 2024 and 2026.
The new Republican-controlled state Supreme Court has already shown great deference to lawmakers. Earlier this year, NC’s Supreme Court overturned the prior court’s redistricting decisions. In doing so, the conservative justices gave a thumbs up for the legislature to again go back to the drawing board to enact politically favorable congressional and legislative voting maps for the 2024 election through the 2030 election.
Republican House Speaker Tim Moore characterized Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling as a slight setback, but one that would not stymie GOP ambitions.
“Fortunately, the current Supreme Court of North Carolina has rectified bad precedent from the previous majority, reaffirming the state constitutional authority of the NC General Assembly,” Moore said in a statement. “We will continue to move forward with the redistricting process later this year.”
The maps Republicans unveil later this year could net the GOP four congressional seats in 2024 and further expand legislative supermajorities in each chamber. The game plan for Democrats and voter advocacy groups: Bolstering awareness of gerrymandering and continuing to fight Republicans in court.
“There are many paths to justice,” Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s vice president of programs, said in a virtual news conference. “If the state legislature should push forward maps that violate the state constitution or federal laws like the Voting Rights Act, we will stand guard against it and we very much look forward to stepping forward with our partners.”
🎓Affirmative Action
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in a 6-3 decision that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s admissions processes were unlawful and that race-based decisions in higher education must come to an end.
The court held that UNC and Harvard’s racial classification used in admissions neither advanced a compelling government interest, nor was narrowly tailored.
The high court’s decision does still allow room for race to be considered in a wider context, but prevents universities from using essays or other questions as a proxy for race-based decisions.
In a statement, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said the university would continue to recruit students of different views and backgrounds.
“Carolina remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond,” Guskiewicz said. “While not the outcome we hoped for, we will carefully review the Supreme Court’s decision and take any steps necessary to comply with the new law.”
👩⚕️NC abortion law now implemented
A North Carolina law reducing access to abortion in most cases from 20 weeks to 12 weeks went into effect on Saturday after a federal judge ruled less than 12 hours earlier that all but one provision of the law could be implemented.
Much of the concerns raised in the lawsuit brought forward by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic were addressed through House Bill 190, a fast-tracked bill Gov. Roy Cooper signed on Thursday to remedy ambiguity in Senate Bill 20, the state’s new abortion law.
“After the complaint was filed, the legislature addressed many of the inconsistencies and impossibilities challenged by the plaintiffs,” U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles wrote in her order on Friday.
HB 190 clarifies that doctors can legally advise women on out-of-state abortions and that medication abortions are allowed up until 12 weeks of pregnancy, not 10.
As a result of the lawsuit and negotiations, victims of rape and incest will be allowed to go to a licensed abortion clinic up to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy through Sept. 30.
In her order, Eagles temporarily struck down one part of the law to allow time for Planned Parenthood and Republican lawmakers to reach an agreement. For the next two weeks, North Carolina can't enforce the requirement that physicians document the existence of an intrauterine pregnancy before proceeding with a medical abortion. Ultrasounds must still take place 72 hours prior to an abortion procedure, but doctors won’t be required to see a fetus within the uterus.
So what are the key things to know about the new law? Of greatest note: North Carolina women may get an abortion for any reason in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a reduction from the 20-week limit that had been in place through Friday.
The new law does make some exceptions to the 12-week rules, as victims of rape and incest can get an abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy, those with life-limiting fetal anomalies can get an abortion up to 24 weeks into their pregnancy and women whose life is at stake can get an abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Women can currently receive an abortion for any reason in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Katherine Farris, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic’s chief medical officer, said all 14 of North Carolina’s abortion clinics will continue continue providing access to abortion until at least Oct. 1, when new licensing requirements for clinics could be put in place.
On Saturday, Gov. Roy Cooper alluded to the possibility of increased abortion restrictions and legal challenges.
“The GOP assault on women’s health continues with the start of their abortion ban today, even as they vow to make it worse next session.” Cooper wrote on Twitter. “And we vow to continue to fight it in the courts, legislature, Congress and at the ballot box.”
🐘Republicans set record for gubernatorial vetoes🦆
On Tuesday, Republicans got six bills to become law over Cooper’s objections, setting a single-day record for vetoes fully overridden, according to data from the N.C. Legislative Library. The previous high of fully overridden bills on a single day was three, which occurred on July 25, 2011 and June 27, 2018.
The House provided the final override for five bills, while the Senate provided the final override for a sixth bill.
If you’d like more in-depth analysis of each of these measures, you can read about them here.
Democrats crossed party lines to override the governor on four bills, but stuck together on two: Senate Bill 364 and House Bill 750.
Under SB 364, state agencies will be prohibited from asking applicants to endorse or express views on items related to political debate as a condition for employment.
Under HB 750, the state treasurer won’t be allowed to weigh environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when determining where to invest the state’s money. State agencies are also barred from creating or using ESG or economically targeted investments (ETI) requirements in its hiring decisions.
Moore and a number of Republicans took to Twitter to highlight the single-day override record.
The art of the deal
For those who don’t follow politics closely, you’ll often hear about Democrats and Republicans being bitterly divided.
Democrats with minimal power want you, the voter, to know they’re fighting the good fight, even when they don’t have the ability to effect change. And Republicans want you, the voter, to appreciate the fruits of their labor and feel the tangible benefits of their continued power.
But towards the tail end of a legislative session, it’s not the cross-party divides that are of greatest consequence. Rather, it’s the intraparty fights between House and Senate Republicans that matter most. This is often visible in the budget process.
Remember when the House said they’d pass a budget by Easter? They did. Remember when the Senate said they’d have a budget by mid-May? They did. Weeks later, where are things at? Stalemate.
While this year’s impasse is happening earlier than recent sessions (yay for reporters wanting to enjoy more of their summers), Republicans in both chambers are struggling to work out differences between their two plans, with one of the biggest sticking points coming down to proposed tax cuts. The earliest we can now see a budget vote: the week of July 24, according to Senate leader Phil Berger.
The budget back-and-forth is fairly normal, especially in recent history. So rather than highlight the sticking points of a recurring drama, I want to underscore something highly unusual we saw this past week that you may have missed: A two-sentence amendment underscoring deep frustrations.
🌿 An unorthodox move
When the end of June rolls around, GOP leaders in each chamber skirmish over the bills they want to see the other chamber take up. Such divisions often take place privately in closed-door meeting rooms or in hallways with minimal foot traffic.
This week, however, frustrations were apparent in plain sight.
The Republican-controlled House hasn’t taken action on a proposal widely supported in the Senate that would legalize marijuana for medical use. Sen. Bill Rabon, the Brunswick County Republican who sponsored the plan, is furious.
To be clear, the votes almost assuredly exist for the bill’s passage in the House. Republican leaders are just refusing to take up cannabis legalization. Why? Most of the 72 members in their chamber are privately telling leadership that they don’t support the bill, at least not yet.
Moore, the chamber’s top Republican, told reporters this past week, “Our rule is that a bill, to pass on the floor, must receive at least a majority of the members of the caucus on the House floor, and it’s just short of that right now, and that’s why it’s not being taken up.”
If you parse through Moore’s statement, there are three key things to unpack: 1. “Our rule;” 2. “At least a majority of the members of the caucus;” and 3. “Just short of that right now.”
First, there is no rule that a bill only be brought forward when a majority of members in the majority party agree. There have been times where chamber leaders force legislation through their chamber that was unpalatable to most of their colleagues.
Second, there’s the word “majority.” For raw math purposes, bills need 61 votes to become law, assuming all 120 House members are present. There are 48 Democrats and 72 Republicans in the House.
Democrats would likely near-universally support cannabis legalization, as was the case when the Senate approved Senate Bill 3. A majority of Moore’s caucus equals 32 members.
Third, something “just short of” a House GOP caucus majority could very well mean medical marijuana legalization is supported by at least 20 House Republicans. If you combine the supportive Democrats and Republicans, the math would work out to well more than 61 votes.
For months, Rabon has tried to get his medical marijuana bill to advance in the House. It has yet to get voted on in a House committee and is currently tied up in the House Health Committee. That chamber has six Republican chairs.
This takes us to the unusual move…
On Wednesday, Rabon amended a bill about physician assistants that was unanimously supported in the House— a highly unusual public rebuke of colleagues on the other chamber. The House bill’s four primary sponsors: All chairs of the health committee that currently has Rabon’s medical marijuana legalization bill tied up.
“This is my favorite amendment of the whole session,” Rabon’s Democratic colleague Sen. Mike Woodard said on the floor.
With Rabon’s two-sentence amendment to House Bill 75, if the House wants to allow certain physician assistants to practice without supervision by a physician, his medical marijuana bill would have to become law first.
“Maybe some folks will kind of look up and pay attention now,” Rabon told WUNC after Wednesday’s legislative session. “We have work to be done. We don’t need to stonewall."
❌🌈Anti-LGBTQ bills sent to Cooper
This week, Republicans sent two bills to Cooper that critics argue could put LGBTQ youth at risk. A third bill was also placed on the governor’s desk this week following a June 22 vote.
House Bill 808
House Bill 808 seeks to prevent doctors from performing surgical gender transition procedures on children, giving kids puberty-blocking drugs, or the use of state funds for such practices.
Cooper is expected to veto the bill and have it subsequently overridden in the GOP-supermajority House and Senate.
Rep. Allison Dahle, a Wake County Democrat who identifies as a Democrat, struggled to fight back tears while speaking about the bill during a floor vote on Wednesday. She said she was concerned the measure would prompt an increase in suicide among an already vulnerable group.
“What you’re doing is you’re causing attention to children who don’t need this kind of attention,” Dahle told her colleagues. “You’re saying to them, ‘You don’t matter. We don’t value you. We don’t care about you because you don’t need medical treatment. You don’t need anything because you’re not human.’ What we’re saying is, ‘Go ahead, kill yourself. Go ahead, end it because you don’t match our values.’”
The measure could face successful legal challenges, however, as proposals elsewhere have been struck down.
Most recently, a U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. ruled that an Alabama law banning gender-affirming treatments for people under 18 violated various parts of the U.S. Constitution.
Cooper has until 11:59 p.m. July 10 to act on HB 808.
Senate Bill 49
Under Senate Bill 49, teachers and counselors must inform parents if their child expresses a desire to change their name or pronoun. The bill also prohibits instruction on gender identity, sexuality and sexual activity in K-4 curricula.
This measure will soon arrive on Cooper’s desk. Once it does, he’ll have 10 days to act on it before his anticipated veto is likely overridden by GOP lawmakers. The bill would largely take effect on Aug. 15.
Of note, Rep. Hugh Blackwell of Burke Count voted against the measure in a floor vote, making an override more difficult for House Republicans. Even so, GOP leaders could work to get Blackwell to flip or call the vote when Democrats are absent in order to override Cooper’s veto.
The measure cleared the House on a near party-line vote on Wednesday, and the Senate approved it on Thursday in a final procedural vote that broke along party lines.
Republicans see the measure as an important tool for keeping parents involved in their child’s personal and educational life and preventing potentially inappropriate material from getting into elementary school classrooms.
Sen. Amy Galey, an Alamance County Republican, said that, if a K-4 student asks about such topics the bill restricts in curricula, the teacher should direct their student to talk to their family.
“Parents should be empowered to raise their children the way that they see fit in their family without being questioned or interrogated or undermined by the state of North Carolina,” Galey said.
Critics worry the bill would prompt increased anxiety for already vulnerable LGBTQ youth who are at greater risk of depression and thoughts of suicide.
“What we’re seeing here is the last vestiges of efforts to erase the LGBTQ community,” said Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Wake County Democrat and one of a handful of LGBTQ lawmakers in North Carolina.
House Bill 574
Under House Bill 574, or the “Fairness in Women's Sports Act,” people whose gender assigned at birth was male wouldn’t be allowed to compete on female sports teams in middle school, high school or college.
The bill was added to the House calendar at the last minute on June 22 and cleared the chamber by a 62-43 vote. Rep. Michael Wray of Northampton County was the lone House Democrat to support the bill, while Sen. Val Applewhite of Cumberland County was the lone Senate Democrat to back the plan.
Cooper formally received the bill on his desk on Tuesday. He has until 11:59 p.m. Friday, July 7, to act on it. He is expected to veto the proposal and have it overridden.
📖5 essential reads
Most NC legislators back medical marijuana, but procedural hurdle could block it (Colin Campbell // WUNC)
Federal judge allows most of North Carolina’s new abortion law to take effect despite a lawsuit (Anne Blythe // North Carolina Health News)
What’s left behind: Canton mill closure leaves complex environmental footprint (Holly Kays // Smoky Mountain News)
Jesse Helms, Family Values, and His Gay Granddaughter (John Drescher // The Assembly)
A second Democrat considers entering NC governor’s race. Here’s who may run in 2024 (Harry Lynch // NC Insider)
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