Is there any constitutional power vested in the citizenry to sue for impeachment of its legislators, on grounds of dereliction of sworn duty? The state has clearly admitted that it is considering HB2 not on the grounds of its merit as law, but as a tit-for-tat as a reward/punishment with reference to another legislative body.
According to he AP report: * “The deal was supposedly reached with input from top politicians and industry leaders: Charlotte agreed to eliminate its anti-discrimination ordinance on the condition that state lawmakers then repeal the legislation known as House Bill 2, which had been a response to Charlotte’s action.”*
But even if there were, this would not likely qualify. The state legislators believe that the public policy of the entire state should conform to one standard. They are certainly entitled to pass a law in response to a city legislature’s efforts to create a contrary policy.
I’m not aware of anywhere in the US that an individual can sue to impeach legislators because they don’t like the reasoning behind a law. If there was a recall procedure (which there isn’t in NC but is in some states) it would require a majority of voters, which you’re pretty unlikely to get since they mostly just won reelection campaigns. I’m also not aware of any part of the US that holds that a State legislature cannot pass laws in response to a local government’s law that they believe is inappropriate in some way - all states actually have some laws limiting what lower governments can and cannot pass, and some are relatively new law.
I’m not sure that you could have a functioning government if a minority of voters could impeach recently elected legislators because they don’t like a particular law. You can always find a law that you can argue was passed for reasons you can argue are invalid, whatever your philosophy, so in practice the legislature would constantly get impeached. I also don’t think you could sensibly have a State government that is superior to local governments but also isn’t allowed to pass laws restricting local governments in response to actions taken by local governments.
The approach here is to sue to overturn the law, using the legislature’s openly admitted reasoning to impugn it. The motivation for a law can be part of the evidence against it.
(This is why creationists, for example, have been so very careful to scrub their proposed legislation of religious terms. They don’t always succeed, and that has been part of their downfall, at least in certain specified cases.)
Also, you can donate to advocates who can work to bring forward evidence of corruption, in hopes of prosecution. Bad reasoning in legislation is not corruption, but real wrong-doing is never far away from the kinds of legislators who engage in reprisals when writing laws. Keep an eagle eye on these bastards, and they will eventually trip up over their own lack of morals.
No, that’s a good way to make your lawsuit a waste of time and money that won’t succeed. The legislatures openly admitted reasoning, that a city passed a local ordinance contrary to what the State feels should be public policy, and so the state passed a law setting policy for the state, overturning the local ordinance, and preempting similar local ordinances is a COMPLETELY VALID reason to pass a law. I don’t see how you could expect a court to rule that a state is not allowed to pass state law in response to localities turning against public policy for the state, it’s routine and numerous such laws have been in effect on a wide variety of topics. Can you provide any examples of a law being overturned by courts based on the logic you’ve presented here?
There are lots of reasons to oppose HB2 and the illegitimate (according to Federal Courts) legislature that created it, but the fact that it was passed in response to a local law simply isn’t one.
This happened in IL when I was living there. The legislature was ruled unconstitutionally ill-proportioned. The issue wasn’t so much gerrymandering, but unequal size of districts. Accordingly, they were told to redistrict the state and hold a new election. They could not agree on a redistricting and accordingly held an election in which the entire legislature was chosen at large. They way they did it (and I am not sure how or by whom this was agreed on) was to allow each party to put up 118 candidates for the 177 seats. So I was presented with a ballot that 118 Democrats on one side and 118 Republicans. I could x one box at the top and vote for all 118 of my party, which is what I did. I could vote for 118 at random, which hardly anyone did. Or could x the one box and then vote for one or more of the other party which had the effect of removing my vote from the guy whose name happened to be opposite him on the list and give it him. It didn’t make a lot of sense and it ended up, as you might predict, with 118 of one party and 59 of the other being elected. That body was able to redistrict, believe me. This would have been in the mid to late 1960s if anyone wants to look it up.