Last month, the North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments about whether it should reinstate death sentences for four inmates whose punishments were previously commuted. Under the state’s Racial Justice Act of 2009, the inmates awaiting execution had successfully challenged their sentences by illustrating that their trials had been affected by racial bias.

Last year, however, the Racial Justice Act was repealed by North Carolina's Republican-controlled state legislature, allowing the state to argue in favor of sentencing the four inmates to die for a second time. The state’s Supreme Court has not said when it will deliver an opinion on the case, and it is not clear whether its ruling will focus on the four defendants or whether it will be broad enough to apply more widely. Either way, the state’s repeal of the Racial Justice Act provides a powerful example of why we should fear the takeover of state legislatures by Republican politicians.

Back in 2010, North Carolina was one of eleven states in which Republicans gained control of both houses of the state legislature. In North Carolina, this marked the first time the GOP controlled both assembly chambers since 1870. The takeover resulted in an onslaught of legislation: sweeping voter identification laws, drastic reduction of unemployment benefits, the subsidization of homeschooling, and cuts in funding for public schools.

The repeal of the Racial Justice Act was part of that legislative push. Local Republicans justified the repeal by arguing that it was unnecessary and excessive. Governor Pat McCrory implied that it offered too many avenues of redress for guilty inmates: “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act,” said McCrory after he signed the repeal. The repeal bill’s sponsor, State Senator Thomas Goolsby, told local news outlet WRAL the act was “bad”—i.e., unnecessary—“law” since those convicted of capital crimes already have “multiple avenues of appeal” available to them.

But a closer look at the reason that these four inmates were able to appeal their death sentences and have their sentences commuted underlines the fundamental necessity of this act. In these four cases, according to the arguments presented in a brief filed by the NAACP on behalf of three of the inmates, racial bias affected the jury-selection process.