North Carolina court says GOP-backed law grabbed power from Democratic governor

North Carolina’s highest court stepped in Friday to limit the Republican-dominated Legislature’s efforts to minimize Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s ability to pursue his goals, declaring unconstitutional a law devising a state elections board that hinted at deadlock.

The state Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 that Cooper couldn’t be forced to pick a politically divided, eight-member elections board from names the two major political parties selected. The law prevented Cooper from removing members with whom he disagreed unless there was wrongdoing.

The law makes Cooper unable to fulfill his duties to ensure election laws are followed because half of the elections board will be people who will probably oppose the governor’s policy preferences, the majority opinion said.

It’s the first of what may be several times the high court steps in to referee the ongoing political battle in state government.

The GOP-led Legislature started changing laws on who organizes and manages elections soon after Cooper narrowly beat incumbent Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016.

Cooper sued over a law that converted the elections board from majority Democrat to equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats and required five members to support any decision. The elections board has had a majority of members from the governor’s political party for a century.

The law also prevented the state’s top elections executive, who originally took the job under the old majority-Republican state board, from being removed from her job for years. It also directed that a Republican be chairman of the new elections board in presidential election years, when national and statewide contests generate the most voter interest.

Cooper didn’t dispute the General Assembly’s authority to reshape government, in this case merging the state Board of Elections with the Ethics Commission, the court said. Instead, Cooper challenged how the new panel was constituted and required to operate, the court said.

Legislative leaders had argued that neither the governor nor state courts could challenge their decision.

But the court said its decision was in line with an earlier ruling in McCrory’s favor that the General Assembly had exerted excessive control over certain government agencies. The problem was that the law required Cooper to pick half the members from a pool of the opposing party’s recommendations, the court ruled.