The North Carolina Legislative Building (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
The North Carolina Senate is set to consider bills limiting Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s powers, requiring cellphone limitation policies in schools, and mandating cooperation with federal immigration authorities after favorable votes in a powerful gatekeeper committee.
On Thursday, members of the Senate Rules Committee endorsed Senate Bill 55, requiring schools to bar the use of cellphones during class time; Senate Bill 58, removing Jackson’s ability to challenge presidential executive orders; and Senate Bill 153, ordering state law enforcement agencies to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The committee also advanced two technical bills related to the state’s community college system.
Most discussion during the meeting centered on the bills concerning the attorney general and immigration.
“While there may be disagreement with whether he can do this or not, it does seem to me that the Attorney General is actually standing up to protect our universities and giving us a competitive advantage,” said Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake), referencing cuts to federal research funding. “In some ways, he’s better positioning you all to provide tax cuts.”
He asked whether backers of SB 58 would want the Attorney General to litigate an executive order that would harm North Carolina’s interests — for example, an “anti-sweet potato” order, a hypothetical that drew laughs from the room.
“If in fact that was to happen, I feel fairly confident that the General Assembly could rise to the occasion and direct the Attorney General to take action against the President,” replied Republican Sen. Timothy Moffitt, the bill’s lead sponsor.
Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Democrat from Buncombe County, noted that Jackson had participated in just four lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders, choosing to do so when billions of dollars in federal funding and thousands of North Carolina jobs were at stake.
“I’m just puzzled about what it is that we don’t like about what our attorney general is doing to help protect the jobs and the economy, to defend — which is his job — defend attacks on the jobs and the economy in North Carolina,” Mayfield said.
She also asked what would happen if Jackson — who serves in an independent constitutionally elected office — simply ignores the General Assembly’s directive. “You can’t impeach him. You can’t call for a new election — what happens if the Attorney General ignores this?”
“I could contemplate that the action that this body could take would be to take Chapter 114, Section 2, and just completely zero it out, and that way, the Attorney General is a feckless, empty shell of a position that has no authority to do anything,” Moffitt said.
Discussing the immigration bill, Sen. Buck Newton, a Republican who co-sponsored the proposal, called it simply “the next step that the state needs to take to help support President Trump’s efforts to curb illegal immigration.”
He explained it as a follow-up to a bill last session that required North Carolina sheriffs to cooperate with ICE, requiring state agencies to do the same, preventing public benefits from going to undocumented immigrants, blocking the University of North Carolina from undertaking “sanctuary-type policies,” and opening up counties that do not cooperate with ICE to lawsuits by waiving their sovereign immunity.
Mario Alfaro, a policy director for El Pueblo NC, criticized the immigration bill as a “violation of state autonomy” during public comment Thursday.
“Instead of protecting the state’s citizens, it will create distrust and increase insecurity for everyone,” Alfaro said. “More than 50% of farm workers are immigrants, more than 35% of construction workers are immigrants. We urge legislators to support policies that protect immigrants and their contributions, not those that ignore or hide the fact that North Carolina’s economy needs immigrant workers.”
Samantha Salkin, a policy analyst for the ACLU of North Carolina, also condemned the bill, calling it “an attack on immigrant communities and an attempt to further the false narrative that immigrants are a drain on our public service system.”
“Forcing law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement erodes the trust between immigrants and the protective services that they should be able to rely on,” Salkin said. “Witnesses and victims of crimes are less likely to report crimes and cooperate with police for fear of deportation, making all of us less safe.”