Courts

Julie Havlak reports for Carolina Journal Online on a state Appeals Court decision allowing Lt. Gov. Dan Forest to proceed with a lawsuit against the State Employees Association’s campaign committee. The suit is based on a 2012 television campaign ad. Rick Henderson’s Daily Journal responds to Judge Pell…

A split 2-1 panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that Lt. Gov. Dan Forest can pursue his six-year-old lawsuit against an election committee that backed his opponent in the 2012 election. The Republican Forest sued the Employees Political Action Committee, which backed Democrat Linda Coleman in…

Lindsay Marchello and Kari Travis report for Carolina Journal Online about property owners who are still waiting for the N.C. Department of Transportation to pay them for takings linked to the Map Act. The Daily Journal explains why a voter identification requirement would place North Carolina squarely within…

The U.S. Supreme Court has avoided a definitive ruling for or against partisan gerrymandering in a Wisconsin case. It’s not clear that the high court’s ruling in Gill v. Whitford will lead to any changes for North Carolina’s election maps this fall. Rather than deal with the key question…

Galen Druke provides a useful analysis at FiveThirtyEight: In the next few weeks — or even days! — extreme partisan gerrymandering may be rescued from legal purgatory. Is it constitutional or not? For years, we haven’t known. But by the end of the month, the U.S. Supreme…

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online ponders the president’s proper role in defending legislation of questionable constitutionality. Perhaps a constitutionally conscientious president should … direct his aides to defend the challenged statutes unless the constitutional case against them is overwhelmingly strong. Or perhaps the executive branch should reach…

Julie Havlak reports for Carolina Journal Online on the state Farm Bill’s treatment of food handlers. John Hood’s Daily Journal weighs the merits of the recent N.C. Supreme Court ruling in the political tug of war between the state school superintendent and the State Board of Education.

Attorneys Robert Henneke and Chance Weldon argue in a Daily Caller column that recent changes challenge the Affordable Care Act‘s constitutionality. In 2012, the five conservative justices on the United States Supreme Court (including Chief justice John Roberts) held that key portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)…