- Governor-elect Josh Stein and current Gov. Roy Cooper have filed a lawsuit to block a state new law that would prevent Stein from appointing a new commander of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.
- The challenged section of Senate Bill 382 calls for current patrol Commander Freddy Johnson to remain in the job through June 2030.
- Stein and Cooper argue that the "legislative commander provision" of SB 382 "threatens public safety" and "fractures the chain of command" during emergencies.
Governor-elect Josh Stein and outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper are going to court to block changes to control of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol’s top leadership post. Those changes are spelled out in Senate Bill 382, enacted into law Wednesday after state lawmakers voted to override Cooper’s veto of the bill.
Stein and Cooper are Democrats. The Republican-led General Assembly approved the measure on party-line votes in the state House and Senate.
Among other changes to state government structure, SB 382 removes the State Highway Patrol from the governor’s oversight.
“Today, Governor Cooper and I have taken legal action to stop the legislature’s unconstitutional and dangerous power grab,” Stein said in a news release Thursday. “This law threatens public safety, fractures the chain of command during a crisis, and thwarts the will of voters. Our people deserve better than a power-hungry legislature that puts political games ahead of public safety.”
“Just days after the voters overwhelmingly chose Governor-Elect Stein to be their chief executive for the next four years, the leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly used a purported hurricane relief bill to curtail, in significant ways, core executive and law enforcement responsibilities that, under our Constitution, pass to Governor Stein on January 1, 2025,” lawyers representing Cooper and Stein wrote in the complaint filed Thursday in Wake County Superior Court.
The case is called Stein v. Moore. It names outgoing House Speaker Tim Moore, Senate Leader Phil Berger, and SHP Commander Freddy Johnson as defendants.
Stein and Cooper target the portion of the 132-page SB 382 that reorganizes the Highway Patrol “as a principal, cabinet-level department and legislatively appoints the Commander of the Patrol — now the equivalent of a Cabinet Secretary to the Governor, but not accountable to the Governor — to serve until July 1, 2030.”
The commander takes over duties that had been assigned to the state Department of Public Safety, led by a Cooper appointee. These include state law enforcement and emergency services and responses to crime and natural and manmade disasters.
The law specifies that Johnson, patrol commander since an appointment from Cooper in April 2021, would continue serving through June 2030 barring “death, resignation, or physical or mental incapacity.”
“Incredibly, Senate Bill 382 prohibits the Governor or anyone else from removing the legislatively appointed Commander for any reason — even if he were to commit serious criminal misconduct,” Cooper and Stein’s lawyers wrote.
“Moreover, Senate Bill 382 threatens the safety of North Carolinians by eliminating the Governor’s powers of supervision and removal over the Commander,” the complaint continued. “The legislatively-appointed Commander may feel empowered to delay, modify, or flatly reject the direction that he receives from the Governor.”
“This fracturing of the chain-of-command for state law enforcement in North Carolina plainly and clearly violates constitutional provisions ultimately intended to protect public safety and ensure accountability to the people,” Cooper and Stein’s lawyers argued.
“In the moments of crisis that periodically face this State and its Governor, a clear chain of command ultimately leading to State’s elected chief executive is vital to protect public safety,” the complaint added. “Breaking that chain profoundly weakens the State’s ability to respond effectively and efficiently to emergencies in a clear and coordinated fashion, whether the crisis at issue is civil unrest, a mass shooting event, an ice storm, a hurricane, or some other regional or statewide emergency.”
The governor and governor-elect “seek to safeguard the people of North Carolina from threats to their public safety and to the people’s assignment of core executive responsibilities to their chief executive,” according to their lawyers.
Cooper and Stein label the “legislative commander provision” as a “direct infringement on the Governor’s law enforcement powers in plain violation of our Constitution.”
The current governor and his successor seek an injunction and declaratory judgment blocking the targeted section of SB 382 as unconstitutional.