NAACP slams court rulings upholding NC voter ID, tax cap amendments

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP is urging the state’s second-highest court to overturn trial court decisions upholding two state constitutional amendments from 2018.

The amendments guaranteed a photo identification requirement for voters in North Carolina and capped the state income tax rate at 7%.

The seven-year legal fight prompted the first season of Carolina Journal’s “Extreme Injustice” podcast.

A unanimous bipartisan three-judge Superior Court panel ruled against the NAACP in September 2025. The judges rejected the group’s arguments that the amendments were racially discriminatory.

Now the NAACP is asking the North Carolina Court of Appeals to reverse that decision.

“While this case ultimately involves questions of great constitutional significance, this appeal centers only on basic rules of civil procedure,” the NAACP’s lawyers wrote Tuesday. “The question before this Court is whether lower court judges, who disagree with a prior ruling of the North Carolina Supreme Court, can abuse the rules of civil procedure to manufacture an outcome they prefer. To restore order and confidence to North Carolina’s judiciary, this Court must soundly reject the lower courts’ lawless acts.”

In August 2022, when the state Supreme Court had a 4-3 Democratic majority, the high court decided with a party-line vote to send the case back to a trial judge for additional findings.

The trial court “ignored this clear mandate” in deciding to send the case to a three-judge panel, according to the NAACP’s brief. That panel then ruled in favor of Republican legislative leaders defending the challenged amendments.

“The judgment not only throws into disarray the well-established hierarchy of our judicial system, but also makes a mockery of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure,” the NAACP’s lawyers argued. “It is well established that lower courts should follow the mandate of higher courts strictly, and not second-guess their decisions.”

“By throwing out the rules of civil procedure, ignoring our State’s highest court, and contradicting the Superior Court’s rulings and fact-findings in this very case, both the Superior Court judge and the panel replaced a rule-bound legal process with arbitrary and unmoored diktat,” the brief added.

Plaintiffs in the case now titled North Carolina NAACP v. Hall had argued that the two challenged amendments unconstitutionally discriminated against minorities.

“Plaintiff’s pleadings fail to establish that ‘no set of circumstances exists under which the act(s) would be valid,’” according to the three-judge panel’s 15-page court order rejecting the NAACP’s arguments. “As such, Plaintiffs pleadings have failed to satisfy the burden of proof as to facial unconstitutionality.”

“As a matter of law, after considering all allegations contained in Plaintiffs pleadings except for conclusions of law and legally impossible facts, Plaintiff fails to meet its burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt that the legislature enacted the Voter ID Amendment with discriminatory intent and that the legislation actually produces a meaningful disparate impact along racial lines,” the order continued.

“As a matter of law, after considering all allegations contained in Plaintiffs pleadings, except for conclusions of law and legally impossible facts, Plaintiff fails to meet its burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt that the legislature enacted Tax Cap Amendment with discriminatory intent and the legislation actually produces a meaningful disparate impact along racial lines,” the judges wrote.

Superior Court Judges James Gregory Bell, Michael Duncan, and Cynthia Sturges issued their decision more than 10 months after hearing oral arguments in the case. Bell is a Democrat based in Robeson County. Duncan of Wilkes County and Sturges of Franklin County are both Republicans.

In an August 2024 memorandum, lawyers for top lawmakers explained why they believe the three-judge Superior Court panel should end the case.

“This matter is on remand to determine whether two amendments proposed by the 2018 North Carolina General Assembly and adopted overwhelmingly by the people of North Carolina should be erased from the Constitution,” lawmakers’ lawyers wrote. “In order for the Court to take such an extraordinary step, Plaintiff must prove … that the amendments have ‘a substantial risk’ of (1) immunizing legislators from democratic accountability; (2) perpetuating the continued exclusion of a category of voters from the democratic process; or (3) constituting intentional racial discrimination.”

“Both amendments at issue here must be left in place because neither amendment meets these factors,” lawmakers’ lawyers argued. “This three-factor equitable test is not adjudicated in a vacuum. Rather, to prevail, Plaintiff must show ‘that there are no circumstances under which the[se] statute[s] might be constitutional.’”

“Newer precedent from the North Carolina Supreme Court regarding photographic identification to vote bears on this Court’s analysis, as does the traditional principles of constitutional review,” the memo added. “It is for these legal reasons that Defendants submit that Plaintiffs claim to invalidate the tax cap amendment … and the voter ID amendment … presently fails as a matter of law.”

State Supreme Court Democrats agreed in 2022 that amendments placed on the election ballot by a racially gerrymandered General Assembly could be deemed invalid, regardless of voters’ response to those amendments.

The NAACP plaintiffs labeled the Republican-led General Assembly a “usurper.”  High court Democrats endorsed much of the plaintiffs’ argument but left the final decision about the amendments’ fate in the hands of the Wake County Superior Court.

Eight months later, after the state Supreme Court had shifted to a 5-2 Republican majority, the new court upheld the state’s voter ID law. Lawmakers had approved the law in 2018, just weeks after voters endorsed the ID constitutional amendment.

That April 2023 state Supreme Court decision prompted the North Carolina State Board of Elections to implement the voter ID requirement. Elections officials first requested ID from voters during 2023 municipal elections. The ID requirement remains in place for voters today.

Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins rejected both constitutional amendments in February 2019. The NC Court of Appeals later reversed Collins’ ruling. The 4-3 Democrat-led Supreme Court’s August 2022 decision reversed the Appeals Court’s decision.

“The issue is whether legislators elected from unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts possess unreviewable authority to initiate the process of changing the North Carolina Constitution, including in ways that would allow those same legislators to entrench their own power, insulate themselves from political accountability, or discriminate against the same racial group who were excluded from the democratic process by the unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered districts,” wrote Justice Anita Earls for the then-Democratic majority.

“We conclude that article I, sections 2 and 3 of the North Carolina Constitution impose limits on these legislators’ authority to initiate the process of amending the constitution under these circumstances,” Earls added. “Nonetheless, we also conclude that the trial court’s order in this case invalidating the two challenged amendments swept too broadly.”

Republican justices objected. “[T]he majority nullifies the will of the people and precludes governance by the majority,” according to dissenters.

“At issue today is not what our constitution says. The people of North Carolina settled that question when they amended the constitution to include the Voter ID and Tax Cap Amendments,” Justice Phil Berger Jr. wrote in dissent. “These amendments were placed on the November 2018 ballot by the constitutionally required three-fifths majority in the legislature. On November 6, 2018, the citizens of North Carolina voted overwhelmingly to approve the North Carolina Voter ID Amendment and the North Carolina Income Tax Cap Amendment. More than 2,000,000 people, or 55.49% of voters, voted in favor of Voter ID, while the Tax Cap Amendment was approved by more than 57% of North Carolina’s voters.”

“Instead, the majority engages in an inquiry that is judicially forbidden — what should our constitution say? This question is designated solely to the people and the legislature,” Berger added. “The majority concedes that constitutional procedures were followed, yet they invalidate more than 4.1 million votes and disenfranchise more than 55% of North Carolina’s electorate.”

The John Locke Foundation’s then-CEO, Amy Cooke, also criticized the 4-3 decision in August 2022.

“The ‘Usurper Four’ Democrat majority has gone scorched earth on the state constitution and the will of millions of North Carolina voters,” Cooke said in a prepared statement. “This decision, crafted by notorious progressive idealogue Anita Earls, is designed to appease the Democrats’ far-left activist base — a small but well-funded base that openly rejects the very popular voter ID law and taxpayer protections. These four justices — Anita Earls, Sam Ervin, Michael Morgan, and Robin Hudson — are guilty of voter suppression.” 

Hudson retired from the court when her term expired in 2022. Voters ousted Ervin in the 2022 election. Morgan retired from the court in 2023 and ran for the Democratic nomination for governor. He lost in the March 2024 primary. Only Earls remains on the state Supreme Court from Cooke’s “Usurper Four.”

NC NAACP v. Moore was the subject of season one of the John Locke Foundation’s “Extreme Injustice” podcast. The case is documented at ExtremeInjustice.com. The podcast focused on efforts to disqualify Berger and fellow Republican Justice Tamara Barringer from taking part in the case. The state Supreme Court ultimately decided to allow Berger and Barringer to decide themselves whether to hear the case.

“NAACP slams court rulings upholding NC voter ID, tax cap amendments” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.