Trudy Wade Goes Down Without a Defense

In less time than it took the General Assembly to pass it, a federal judge in Greensboro nixed the city redistricting that Sen. Trudy Wade really really wanted to impose on her hometown. Sen. Wade is pissed, too, and whining publicly that the Attorney General's office didn't show up in court to defend her gerrymandering.

"It is shameful that Attorney General Roy Cooper refuses to do his duty and defend state law," Wade said yesterday.

Photo taken of the defense table last Thursday

But the lawsuit wasn't against the State of North Carolina, and Roy Cooper had told leaders in the General Assembly in advance of the court hearing that they would have to defend the law themselves. Did they? No. In fact, no one showed up in Judge Eagles' courtroom to defend Trudy Wade's redistricting. No one.

Suggesting, we assume, that the Trudy Wade redistricting was indefensible. Also an embarrassment -- a local power-grab so nakedly unsupportable that not one sleazy lawyer could be found in the universe to slink into court to make an argument in its defense.

Federal Judge Slaps Permanent Injunction on the Greensboro Redistricting Law

Federal District Court Judge Catherine Eagles has thrown out the Trudy Wade redistricting scheme for Greensboro for this election cycle, putting off a final decision on the law's constitutionality until a trial can be held prior to the 2017 city election.

"It appears on the current record that the new statute deprives Greensboro voters, alone among municipal voters in the state, of the right to change the city’s municipal government by referendum and otherwise treats the City of Greensboro and its voters differently from all other municipalities and municipal voters, without a rational basis," wrote Judge Eagles in her order today.

Another power-grab by the NC General Assembly thrown under the proverbial bus by a judge.

Meanwhile, the Republican-dominated NC Supreme Court, voting in a strictly partisan manner (4-3), today ruled that North Carolina can use public tax dollars to help children attend private and religious schools via a voucher program that a Wake County Superior Court judge had previously ruled unconstitutional.

We've got something akin to "the Roberts Court" in North Carolina, only worse. With Associate Justice Paul Newby on the Supreme Court bench, it'll be a cold day in July before we see a ruling that actually upholds the state constitution rather than upholding the partisan whims of the General Assembly.

Legal Eagles: "Get Your Ideology Out of Her Vagina!"

U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles has declared North Carolina's new Republican restriction on abortion, passed last year, an unconstitutional infringement of rights. The North Carolina law required women to undergo an ultrasound, and it required doctors to describe what the ultrasound revealed.

Judge Eagles ruled that states don’t have the power to force a health care provider to be the bearer of what she called an “ideological message in favor of carrying a pregnancy to term.” In other words, the new law violates the free speech rights of doctors.

Judge Eagles had previously put the law on hold while she considered its constitutionality.

“If these unconstitutional measures had gone into effect, doctors would have been prevented from using their best medical judgment to provide patients with care based on their specific individual needs,” said Jennifer Rudinger, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.