North Carolina To Require Judicial Panels For Constitutional Challenges

In North Carolina, starting in September, all constitutional challenges will need to be heard by a three-judge panel appointed by the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court. State Republicans wrote and passed the law requiring panels in hopes of keeping challengers to other legislative efforts – including the imposition of conditions on abortions, new voting rules and ending tenure for teachers – from finding a sympathetic judge to overturn them. Judge panels for any purpose are rare in state court systems, and no state has established a panel specifically to hear constitutional challenges.