Gov. Roy Cooper lost a round in court last week and didn’t like it. “It looks like the threats from the legislature had an effect on these judges,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said after a three-judge panel dismissed the governor’s suit against the legislature over the composition of election boards and an ethics commission.
That was out of line.
It was a reference to a statement made in February by legislative leaders Phil Berger and Tim Moore after a court ruled against them in a different case.
“Their decision to legislate from the bench will have profound consequences, and they should immediately reconvene their panel and reverse their order,” Berger and Moore said in a statement.
This is the state of conflict in which North Carolina residents find their three branches of government. It’s a shame.
It was wrong for legislative leaders to threaten a court with unspecified consequences. It likely wasn’t an idle threat, since the legislature has taken steps to exert its own control over the judicial branch. It’s also wrong for the governor, or his spokesman, to suggest that judges yielded to threats last week.
The courts should be free of political influence. It erodes confidence in their impartiality when state leaders threaten them with “consequences” or imply they have given in to bullying.
The judges last week said they lacked jurisdiction to decide the governor’s complaint. Cooper sued to block a legislative action merging the state elections board and ethics commission and denying him political control over it. Cooper will appeal.
This was just one measure taken by the Republican legislature to diminish the governor’s power after Cooper, a Democrat, unseated Republican Pat McCrory in November. Cooper is right to challenge them all.
McCrory also went to court to protect executive authority from legislative encroachment and won a critical victory in the N.C. Supreme Court over appointment power. That only seemed to fuel more aggressive attacks by the legislature once Cooper replaced McCrory.
After their victory last week, Berger and Moore said: “We encourage the governor to accept this result and abandon his taxpayer-funded pursuit of total control of the board responsible for regulating his own ethics and campaign finance conduct.”
That’s the same control former governors had; now Republicans are trying to give themselves the upper hand — and spending taxpayer dollars to finance their power play. Other legal dramas are playing out over gerrymandering and voting restrictions. Legislators have lost challenges to their indefensible actions on Greensboro City Council changes, the Asheville water system, same-sex marriage and other matters. The costs have run into millions of dollars.
Taxpayers aren’t served well by endless litigation or by leaders who disparage the courts whenever they lose.
