In huge victories for Republicans, the new GOP-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday threw out an earlier ruling against gerrymandered voting cards and upheld a voter identification law that had been rejected by colleagues as racially biased.

The partisan gerrymandering ruling should make it significantly easier for the Republican-dominated state legislature to help the GOP win seats in the narrowly divided U.S. House when state lawmakers redraw congressional lines for the 2024 election. Under the current map, Democrats won seven of the states’ 14 congressional seats last November.

The court, which turned majority Republican this year with the election of two GOP judges, ruled after taking the unusual step of reviewing the courts’ opinions in December, when Democrats had four seats to the Republicans’ three. The court held rehearsals in March.

Friday’s 5-2 rulings also mean state lawmakers should have more leeway in drawing General Assembly district boundaries over the next decade, and that a mandate for photo ID approved by the GOP-controlled legislature end of 2018, can be enforced in time for the 2024 elections.

In another court decision made Friday along party lines, the judges overturned a court decision on when convicted felons’ voting rights could be restored. That means potentially tens of thousands of people convicted of felonies will have to wait to complete their probation or parole or pay their fines to become eligible to vote again.

Republican lawmakers celebrated the overwhelming streak of favorable decisions that resulted from the reconstitution of the state’s Supreme Court.

Outside groups spent millions

about the Supreme Court campaigns in two states in 2022. The remaining Democratic justices and their allies denounced the decisions. Chief Justice Paul Newby, who wrote the majority opinion in the redistricting case, said the previous Democratic majority had erred in declaring that the state constitution prohibited extensive partisan gerrymandering. the

The court destroyed maps last year

which the General Assembly drew, saying they gave Republicans an inordinate electoral advantage over their right to vote. Newby said a ban on partisan gerrymandering is absent from the plain language of the constitution. Associate Justice Anita Earls, who wrote the dissenting opinion, said the court ruled correctly last year to ensure that all North Carolina residents “regardless of political party were not denied their fundamental right to vote on an equal footing.” … Nowadays the majority deprives the people of this right.