A lawsuit arguing NC's legislature is illegitimate may have far-reaching consequences

RALEIGH -- Lawyers for Republican legislators and the NAACP went back and forth Thursday at the North Carolina Court of Appeals, arguing over the very legitimacy of the North Carolina General Assembly.

Republicans have retained a majority and sometimes a supermajority at the legislature, in part, through political districts that were later overturned as unconstitutional gerrymandering. So after the legislature voted to put six constitutional amendment proposals on the 2018 ballot — four of which voters then approved and put into the N.C. Constitution — the North Carolina NAACP sued over amendments that would cap the income tax rate and require voter ID.

There have been several lawsuits against the amendments. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won a lawsuit just before the election arguing that Republicans were trying to put misleading language on the ballot to describe the amendments. He later lost another challenge to the amendments, as did the NAACP.

But in a separate lawsuit, the NAACP got a high-profile win after the election that surprised many observers. The group and allies argued that the legislature was illegitimate and had no authority to approve the amendments in the first place. And this spring, they won.

Read more: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article236867523.html