A N.C. Court of Appeals order means that the state doesn’t have a board that oversees elections and ethics laws, Senate leader Phil Berger said Thursday afternoon. Berger made a rare visit to the room in the Legislative Building reserved for reporters to announce the latest news in an ongoing lawsuit over a December law combining the ethics and elections boards into a new State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement. “You still have all of the laws that folks are required to comply with, but we don’t have an Ethics Commission and we don’t have a Board of Elections based on this order,” Berger said.
Asked how any elections or ethics matter would be decided now, Berger responded “those are questions that will need to be answered. There could be some questions as to the legal effect of any decisions they make during that period of time that they are nonexistent.”
The order from the Court of Appeals, dated Tuesday, is difficult to understand without a law degree. Gov. Roy Cooper’s attorneys have a different interpretation than Berger.
“The three-judge panel, the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court have all made clear their desire for the status quo to be maintained until this case is decided,” Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said in an email. “We don’t believe the Court of Appeals had any intention of eliminating either the Board of Elections or Ethics Commission as that would not make sense.”