In major ruling, US Supreme Court rejects elections theory put forth by NC Republicans

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a controversial legal theory Tuesday advanced by North Carolina’s GOP legislative leaders in a nationally watched case in which they had argued that state courts shouldn’t be allowed to strike down the rules lawmakers pass dealing with federal elections.

Supporters of what’s been called the “independent state legislature theory” say authority over federal elections laws, including district lines for the U.S. House of Representatives, lies only with state legislatures. Opponents of the doctrine say it would give state lawmakers across the country free rein to violate their state constitutions.

In a 6-3 decision released Tuesday, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court rejected the argument that state courts have no say over state lawmakers, holding that the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause “does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.”

GOP lawmakers had argued that the N.C. Supreme Court had overstepped its bounds by tossing congressional district lines they had drawn in a major redistricting case last year.

Writing for the majority, Roberts wrote that the justices declined to rule on whether the state Supreme Court had “strayed beyond the limits derived from the Elections Clause,” because North Carolina’s legislative leaders “did not meaningfully present the issue” in their petition asking the court to hear the case, in their briefing, or during oral arguments in December.

At the end of a 30-page opinion, Roberts concluded that state courts “retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints” in disputes over the rules state lawmakers set for federal elections, but added that federal courts “must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review.”

Page 1 of 21-1271 Moore v. Harper (06_27_2023)

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The court’s ruling in the case, Moore v. Harper, had been one of the most highly anticipated this term. Roberts was joined by fellow conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, and the court’s three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, which Justice Neil Gorsuch joined and Justice Samuel Alito joined in part.

The court’s ruling affirms the earlier ruling by the N.C. Supreme Court, but in practical terms, it likely doesn’t change much for GOP lawmakers who are planning to draw and pass a new set of congressional and state legislative maps this fall, since any challenges would go to a state court now dominated by Republicans, not Democrats.

And while the court decided not to weigh in on the question of overreach by state courts in Tuesday’s opinion, it did recognize that state courts “do not have free rein.”

Kavanaugh, in a separate concurring opinion, wrote that for now, the court didn’t need to “adopt any specific standard for our review of a state court’s interpretation of state law in a case implicating the Elections Clause,” but said that the court “should and presumably will” do so in the future.

In his dissent, Thomas questioned why the court was ruling on the case at all. Thomas wrote that the majority opinion was affirming a state court ruling that had “since been overruled and supplanted,” and said the issue before the court was “indisputably moot.”

Thomas also suggested that the court’s ruling would prompt more questions and more uncertainty about when and how state courts could review election rules set by state lawmakers, and predicted that some of those legal disputes will “arise haphazardly, in the midst of quickly evolving, politically charged controversies.”

Reactions from lawmakers, voting rights groups

Tuesday’s ruling from the Supreme Court yielded celebratory reactions from Democrats, who took a victory lap over the court declining to endorse the independent state legislature theory.

Republicans, on the other hand, said they were focused on the next round of redistricting they expect to start this fall, to draw new maps that would be used in 2024.

House Speaker Tim Moore, who had petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last year, told The News & Observer that the court’s ruling wasn’t unexpected.

“I’m not surprised in some ways, because the U.S. Supreme Court, if they can find a way to not wade into much more weighty questions they will generally defer to — they will not overturn something,” Moore said.

“It’s a complex legal question. It’s an analysis that isn’t simple,” he added. “But I’m just glad that we all had our day in court and the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken, and so that will determine the precedent going forward for the other 49 states.”

A spokesperson for President Joe Biden said the court had rightly rejected the “extreme” legal theory. Otherwise, it “would’ve opened the door for politicians to undermine the will of the people, and would’ve threatened the freedom of all Americans to have their voices heard at the ballot box,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters.

Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is running for governor in 2024, and who had urged the court to reject the theory, said that Tuesday’s ruling had “reaffirmed the most central principle of our democracy: that the people, not politicians, have political power.”

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, meanwhile, called the ruling a “good decision that curbs some of the power of Republican state legislatures and affirms the importance of checks and balances.”

What led up to the Supreme Court’s ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court had sought guidance from the parties to the case after the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed its own decision from last year’s case.

In 2022, the state Supreme Court had a Democratic majority and ruled that the state’s congressional map had been drawn by state lawmakers to give Republicans an unfair advantage.

But the 2022 elections gave Republicans the majority of seats on the state Supreme Court, and they nearly immediately said they would review the work of their predecessors.

This year, the state’s highest court announced its reversal, leaving the U.S. Supreme Court justices asking where that left their jurisdiction over the case.

An attorney for opponents of the maps said Moore and the other state legislators no longer had a case to bring to the U.S. Supreme Court. The legislators already won the case and have a free hand to draw districts as they see fit, Abha Khanna wrote to the Supreme Court.

“Because the case or controversy has been resolved in Petitioners’ favor, Petitioners no longer have standing and the case is moot,” Khanna wrote. “Petitioners lack standing because they no longer suffer any injury ‘fairly traceable’ to the state court’s decision or that this Court could redress.”

Map opponents with the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters added that its members felt what the state court did was “unlawful.”

“But if you take its opinion at face value, it deprives the U.S. Supreme Court of any jurisdiction it might have had over the case about the Congressional map,” the group wrote.

But another group opposing the maps, Common Cause North Carolina, argued that this issue would keep coming before the U.S. Supreme Court, and that it typically comes before a pending deadline of an election.

“The U.S. Supreme Court should toss the nonsensical ‘independent state legislature theory’ into the dustbin where it belongs — and there’s no better time than now when we aren’t on the eve of a major election,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina. “The people of North Carolina deserve to know that our constitutional freedoms will withstand attacks by extremist politicians.”

And on the other side, attorneys for Moore and other lawmakers also called for a ruling.

“While the North Carolina legislature is free to enact a new congressional map to govern the 2024 election cycle and subsequent elections, if this Court reverses Harper I then the original congressional map adopted by the North Carolina legislature before the outset of this controversy will be restored as the default map governing congressional elections in North Carolina,” David H. Thompson wrote. “This case is not moot, and this Court is fully possessed of jurisdiction to decide it.”

The next round of redistricting

State GOP leaders had indicated they would wait until after Moore v. Harper has been decided before they proceed with the next round of redistricting.

Lawmakers will draw a new congressional map this year, since the map used for last year’s election had been drawn and put into place by a group of outside experts hired by a court.

State law requires that maps drawn by a court be used for only one election, which means that a new map has to be used for the 2024 congressional elections.

The map used in November’s elections led to each party winning seven of the state’s 14 U.S. House districts. The map previously passed by GOP lawmakers, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court last year, would’ve almost certainly led to a larger Republican advantage, likely a 10-4 or 11-3 split.

Lawmakers may draw a similar map later this year when they begin the redistricting process.

Michael Wilner of McClatchy DC contributed.