LAL Live: NC Supreme Court, Liz Cheney, and Dennis Rodman + W. Michael Boyer (NPS August 22)

Norm is back! Well, at least for the moment. And he is joined as he is at the top of every week by W. Michael Boyer, producer for Law and Legitimacy and North Carolina-based attorney. 

Mike begged Norm to give North Carolina a bit of the limelight this week, and Norm graciously acquiesced. On top of Mike's mind is the recent North Carolina Supreme Court decision in North Carolina Conference of the NAACP v. Moore. 

In 2017, the Supreme Court of the United States held that 28 North Carolina districts had been previously gerrymandered in an unconstitutionally gerrymandered. In November 2018, more than 2 million North Carolinians voted to approve two (2) proposed constitutional amendments: (i) a photo I.D. requirement; and (ii) a cap on state income tax. These two amendments were among a total of six proposed state constitutional amendments. Each of those proposed amendments had been previously approved by a supermajority (60%) of the North Carolina legislature. 

Because of that 2017 SCOTUS decision, the NAACP argued to the North Carolina Supreme Court that because 28 North Carolina political districts had been deemed unconstitutionally gerrymandered that the majority vote by North Carolina citizens to approve both amendments should be reversed. 

The Court did not disagree, and remanded the case back to the trial court for specific findings of fact related to the role of legislators from the unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts. 

Regardless of the outcome, however, the North Carolina Supreme Court's decision in this case is ad hoc at best. The NAACP's case has a flagrant flaw—one acknowledged by the North Carolina Supreme Court—and that flaw is that it has no conceptual answer to the question of why the Court is not looking at ALL acts taken by the legislators from the 28 tainted districts?

For Norm, it seems like yet another example of a gathering racial storm on the American horizon. 

For Mike, he struggles with the principled direction of the Court's opinion in contrast to the hyper-partisan nature of the questions that the North Carolina citizens have answered. The genie does not go back in the bottle. 

We'll continue to follow this case. 

Norm and Mike entertain listener calls for the balance of the show. Norm entertains the possiblity that Liz Cheney might be a viable 2024 'centrist' presidential candidate, and Mike suggests that Dennis Rodman is as qualified as anyone. 

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