The state Supreme Court's newly constituted Republican majority granted Republican lawmakers a rehearing on a voter ID case they lost last year when Democrats held the court's majority.
A 4-3 Democratic majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court last year upheld a trial court's finding that a mostly GOP-backed 2018 law requiring photo ID at the polls had an unconstitutionally disparate impact on Black voters.
When Republicans won a majority on the court last fall, GOP lawmakers immediately sought yesterday's rehearing. They say the previous court got it wrong and that the law expanded the types of permissible IDs and was not intended to discriminate.
One of the five Republican justices, Phil Berger Jr. pressed an attorney for the parties who fought the law.
"I'm asking you at what point could this identical legislation be passed by a future legislature," he said.
Berger's father, Phil Berger Sr., heads the state senate.