RALEIGH -- The legislature is technically in a session right now. Though most members are in town, they don’t need to be while legislative leaders await court actions. Amd one decision handed down last Friday has some Republicans fuming.

“Let me be very clear,” says Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican, “as Governor Cooper telegraphed months ago, the four Democrats on the Supreme Court were going to give him what they wanted.  So they started with the premise that he's going to win. And figured out how to get there through various pages of text.”

In an opinion on a case involving the merging and make up of the State Board of Elections and Ethics, and the Court said they believe a lower court erred in dismissing the governor’s complaint and reversed the decision. But many are left wondering exactly what that reversal means.

“We are still assessing the practical implications,” says Patrick Gannon with the State Board of Elections. 

Legal experts say, as the case returns to a lower court, there are indeed still questions left, including how the State Board of Elections should now be constituted.

“The only thing the Court really decided is that you are going to have something other than an evenly divided Democrat/Republican board,” says Bob Orr, former State Supreme Court justice. ”In order for the governor to at least ostensibly enough control to meet separation of powers.”

The question of the board makeup is not only a state issue- county boards of election are also dealing with this.

 “It’s all 100 of us that are in the same boat right now,” says Michael Dickerson with the Mecklenburg County Elections Board. “We're just sort of hanging out, waiting, preparing as much as we can and getting ready to go.”

And this opinion is unlikely to finalize the issue.

“The General Assembly is trying to make sense of this muddled contradictory opinion and trying to formulate a plan that will make sure that we can have free and fair elections,” says Lewis.

While this case is remanded back to the lower court, Governor Cooper's office sent a letter to the State Board of Elections on Monday telling them they “must halt all activity relating to, or in support of, the merger of the State Board of Elections and the State Ethics Commission.