Old North News

The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 23 ruling that upheld the right of North Carolina lawmakers to intervene in court to defend a 2018 voter ID law was applauded by some of the nation’s leading advocates for laws and voting practices that advance election integrity.

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, called the 8-1 ruling on the case a victory for the rule of law.

“Honest Elections Project filed an amicus brief in this case and applauds the Court for defending state legislatures’ right to intervene to protect election integrity,” Snead told Old North News in an email. “The case is a major win that will help ensure that lawmakers, not partisan lawyers, write our election laws.”

In the case, Berger v. N.C. State Conference of the NAACP, state Republican legislative leaders President of the Senate Philip Berger and House Speaker Rep. Timothy Moore sought to intervene in a voter ID case after questioning North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s commitment to defending it. Stein is a Democrat.

The Legislature had approved the law over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto after the voters approved a voter ID amendment to the state Constitution. A separate state law allows the legislative leaders to intervene in litigation over the constitutionality of a law. But in the Berger case, lower courts twice rejected the lawmakers’ attempts to intervene.

Ken Cuccinelli, national chairman of the Election Transparency Initiative and former attorney general of Virginia, said that the ruling presents more than an opportunity to preserve election integrity.

“More fundamentally,” he wrote in an email, “it preserves the constitutional prerogatives of state legislatures to protect their own laws. With attorneys general like Pennsylvania and North Carolina have are actively attempting to undermine duly passed laws in their own States, it is critical that state legislatures be able to defend the legitimacy and viability of their own laws.”

Before the ruling, Tom Spencer, vice president of the Lawyers Democracy Fund (LDF), said for an earlier story that the impact of the decision could be felt across the country.

“What this case comes down to is who truly represents the people when it comes to enacting election laws,” Spencer told Old North News.

LDF, a voter rights public interest law firm, filed an amicus brief in the case in January