RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s highest court has ruled that it will not expedite appeals of the results in two lawsuits brought by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. The governor challenged new laws that undermined his power to select members of several boards and commissions.

The state Supreme Court, in orders released Friday, denied requests from Republican lawmakers sued by Cooper to hear the cases without waiting for the middle-level appeals court to review and rule on the arguments. The one-paragraph rulings do not specify how individual justices have responded to the petitions to send the cases to the Supreme Court. Cooper’s lawyers had asked the court not to grant the requests.

The decisions could prolong the process leading to final rulings on whether the board changes passed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly in late 2023 despite Cooper’s vetoes will be allowed or blocked by the state constitution. The state Supreme Court may also want to review the cases after the appeals court’s intervention. No dates have been set for oral arguments before the appeals court, and briefs are still being filed.

One lawsuit challenges a law that transfers the governor’s authority to choose state and local board of elections members to the General Assembly and its chairmen. A three-judge panel of trial lawyers in March rejected changes to the board of elections, saying they would interfere with the governor’s ability to ensure that elections and election laws are “faithfully implemented.”

The blocked changes to the Board of Elections were supposed to have taken place in January. This means that the current Board of Elections system will remain in place. For example, the governor chooses all five members of the state board, with Democrats holding three of them.

Even before Friday’s rulings, the legal process made it highly unlikely that the Republicans’ revised composition of the panel would have been implemented in the battleground state this election cycle. Still, Cooper’s lawyers wrote to the state Supreme Court that bypassing the appeals court risks “significant harm to the ongoing administration of the 2024 election.”

In the other suit, Cooper sued to block the makeup of several boards and commissions because they prevented him from having enough control to implement the state’s laws. While a separate three-judge panel blocked new membership formats for two state committees that approve transportation policy and spending and select recipients of economic incentives, the new makeup of five other commissions remained unchanged.

Also on Friday, a majority of the justices rejected Cooper’s requests to disqualify Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. from attending hearings in the two cases. Cooper argued that the judge’s father is Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger, who is a defendant in both cases along with House Speaker Tim Moore. In June, the younger Berger, a registered Republican, had asked the rest of the court to rule on the disqualification motions as the court allows.

A majority of the justices – the other four registered Republicans – supported an order saying they did not believe the code of conduct for judges barred Judge Berger from participating. The elder Berger is a party to the litigation only in his official capacity as Senate leader, and state law requires the person in Berger’s position to become a defendant in lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state laws, the order said.

The court’s two registered Democrats – Associate Justices Allison Riggs and Anita Earls – said the younger Berger should have recused himself. In dissenting opinions, Riggs wrote that the plain language of the code required his recuse because of their familial connection.