Can't remove gridlines when plotting with geom_sf

Question

The standard means of removing gridlines seem futile when plotting with geom_sf.

For instance, if we plot a simple ggplot object, this works to remove the grid

library(tidyverse)
library(sf)

mtcars %>%
  ggplot(
    aes(disp, hp)
  ) +
  geom_point() +
  theme(
    panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor = element_blank()
  )

returns

but the same code fails to remove the grid when you plot using geom_sf

"shape/nc.shp" %>% 
  system.file(
    package = "sf"
  ) %>% 
  st_read(
    quiet = TRUE
    ) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_sf(aes(fill = AREA)) +
  theme(
    panel.grid.major = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor = element_blank()
  )

Answer 1

This issue was raised on the ggplot2 github site. You can remove the gridlines by either of:

1. Setting the colour of the gridlines to be transparent with theme(panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "transparent"))

2. Adding coord_sf(datum = NA) after calling geom_sf