NC Policy Update | neighborsoncall

Neighbors on Call’s NC Policy Update for 04/15/24

Voting Rights

On Thursday the NC Supreme Court heard a lawsuit that would determine whether people who wrongfully accuse others of voter fraud may be sued for defamation. The suit stems from the 2016 gubernatorial election, when supporters of Republican Pat McCrory, who narrowly lost to Democrat Roy Cooper, falsely accused many Democratic voters of committing voter fraud. While the voters seeking to sue these supporters for defamation have won in lower courts, the NC Supreme Court seems likely to rule instead in favor of the Republicans who made the false accusations, a decision that lawyers for the Democratic voters say could embolden political operatives to make false voter fraud accusations in future elections.

Education Policy

Republican leaders at the NCGA are planning to allocate additional funding for charter school vouchers during the next legislative session, potentially as much as $300 million. That figure was the shortfall in the so-called Opportunity Scholarship program this year as legislation opened the program to all families, including wealthier families and those with children already in private school, bringing in a record 72,000 applications. Critics of the voucher program, including Governor Cooper, have denounced the Republicans’ intention to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to help rich families attend private schools while public schools aren’t fully funded.

Immigration

A key Republican priority during the next legislative session beginning April 24 is passing legislation requiring North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is the fourth year in a row the legislature has tried to pass such legislation. In 2019 and 2022, Governor Cooper overrode these bills with enough Democrats in the NCGA to sustain his veto, and in 2023, when Republicans would have been able to override his veto, the bill didn’t get through the NC Senate before the end of the session. The bill, HB 10, would require sheriffs to hold undocumented immigrants without a warrant at the request of ICE.

Fair Representation

On Thursday a federal appeals court ruled to keep an NCGA-drawn NC Senate map in a gerrymandering suit brought by two Black voters in eastern North Carolina who alleged the map discriminated against Black voters. The ruling, which affirmed a lower court decision against the plaintiffs, was issued by a three-judge panel, divided 2-1 with the sole judge appointed by a Democratic president, Judge Roger Gregory, dissenting. The judges writing the majority opinion, Judges Allison Rushing and J. Harvie Wilkinson III, pointed to the nearness of the election as a motivating factor in their reasoning, though Gregory noted in his dissent that the NCGA left the plaintiffs little time to bring their case given that they enacted new maps close to the candidate filing deadline.

Education Policy

On Tuesday the NC House Select Committee on Education Reform made a report to the NCGA that included a recommendation to modify criteria for the state’s A-F grading system for schools. The committee recommended the inclusion of new “readiness” and “opportunity performance” measures in the grading system, in line with a proposal Superintendent Catherine Truitt made to the committee last month. “Readiness” would look at how many students go to college, a job, or the military after they graduate from the school, as well as how many are able to graduate in four to five years, while “opportunity performance” would measure participation in school activities and rates of absenteeism. The committee also mentioned teacher pay in its report, noting that teacher recruitment in the state is still challenging given low teacher pay.

Voting Rights

NC State Board of Elections data from the March 5 primary shows that more than 1600 ballots were thrown out during the primary election. This election was the first statewide election with a new mail-in ballot receipt deadline of Election Day (previously ballots only needed to be postmarked by Election Day), resulting in 1124 ballots received after the deadline being thrown out. Additionally, the new voting ID requirement resulted in 473 provisional ballots rejected for lack of voter ID, either because voters did not fill out an exception form (413 voters) or because their request for an exception was denied (60 voters).

Reproductive Rights

On Thursday a group of North Carolina Democrats called on the NCGA and Congress to protect rights to in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. A recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that found that embryos created through IVF are children led some providers to halt IVF treatment in Alabama, though the Alabama Legislature later passed a law to protect the treatment. NC House Speaker Tim Moore has said he doesn’t think the NCGA will take up the issue in the coming session.