RALEIGH – North Carolina legislative leaders do not oppose Supreme Court review of Gov. Josh Stein’s challenge to elections-board appointment changes, but they are asking the justices to uphold the law that shifted authority to the state auditor.
Lawyers for Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall filed their response Tuesday in case No. 325P26. The seven-page filing answers Stein’s notice of appeal and petition for discretionary review of a Sept. 16 Court of Appeals decision.
The response argues that appointing State Board of Elections members is a duty assigned by statute, not a power reserved exclusively to the governor by the state constitution. Legislative leaders contend that lawmakers can move those duties among independently elected Council of State officials without violating separation-of-powers protections.
Stein’s petition takes the opposite position. His lawyers argue that elected executive officers have distinct constitutional roles and cannot be treated as interchangeable. Assigning supervision of election laws to the auditor, they contend, prevents the governor from fulfilling his responsibility to ensure that laws are faithfully executed.
The dispute concerns provisions of Session Law 2024-57 that transferred state and county elections-board appointment powers from the governor to the auditor. The Court of Appeals upheld the changes in a divided ruling. Stein is seeking review of that decision; the legislative response is an argument from a party, not a new court ruling.
If the Supreme Court takes the case, Berger and Hall want it to consider whether the challenge raises a political question beyond judicial resolution, whether moving duties within the executive branch implicates separation of powers, and whether the appointment changes are constitutional.
The filing also points to two other appointment-power cases scheduled for argument Nov. 10. Legislative leaders say they would not object if the court held this petition until those decisions or sent the case back for further proceedings in light of them.
That position distinguishes the elections-board appeal from the other cases already set for argument. The new response does not itself schedule a hearing, grant review or change who currently holds appointment authority.
Sources
- Legislative defendants’ Nov. 3 response, No. 325P26
- Carolina Journal: Nov. 3 report
- Governor’s notice of appeal and petition
Photo Credit: File photograph of the North Carolina Legislative Office Building in Raleigh, April 16, 2023, by Indy beetle, via Wikimedia Commons; CC0 1.0 public-domain dedication. Cropped and resized; legislative offices, not the Supreme Court or a current hearing.
Editor’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.