A sane US Supreme Court ruling on election oversight won’t end Carolina crazy | Opinion

Those who care about democracy felt relief last week when a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical during oral arguments in a case that seeks to end state judicial oversight of federal elections.

The court may yet overturn two centuries of established law and rule in favor of the radical change sought by North Carolina Republican lawmakers in Moore v. Harper. But it’s reassuring that a majority of justices appear to see the disaster that would follow from letting state lawmakers shape election districts, voting laws and potentially election outcomes any way they want.

By rejecting the fringe “independent state legislature theory” in Moore v. Harper, the court would do what Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper urged it to do in a New York Times op-ed on the eve of the oral arguments: Don’t let North Carolina crazy spread to the other 49 states.

But the prospect that other states may be spared is cold comfort for North Carolina. The crazy is still here and it’s about to get worse.

A measure of how much worse can be found in the state case that led Republican legislative leaders to ask the U.S. Supreme Court for exclusive control over federal elections. In February, the state Supreme Court, with a 4-3 Democratic majority, found in Harper v. Hall that the Republican-drawn congressional district map was illegally gerrymandered.

The majority opinion written by Justice Robin Hudson said the map violated the North Carolina Constitution’s guarantee of free elections. She pointedly rejected the Republicans’ claim that the court had no power to rule on redistricting because it is solely a legislative function.

Hudson wrote: “When North Carolinians claim that acts of their government violate … fundamental rights, and particularly when those acts choke off the democratic processes that channel political power from the people to their representatives, it is the solemn duty of this Court to review those acts to enforce the guarantees of our constitution.”

But Hudson is retiring from the court and Republicans gained two seats in November. The court that will be sworn in in January will have a 5-2 Republican majority. The newly constituted court will not only be reluctant to oppose actions by the Republican-led legislature, it may also undo the current court’s work on redistricting and school funding.

A foreboding sense of what’s to come rises from Chief Justice Paul Newby’s dissent in Harper v. Hall, a dissent joined by his fellow Republican justices, Phil Berger Jr., and Tamara Barringer. The chief justice wrote: “This Court is simply not constitutionally empowered nor equipped to formulate policy or develop standards for matters of a political, rather than legal, nature.”

Newby added: “Moreover, this Court has long recognized that responsibilities reserved for the legislature are not reviewable by this Court because they raise political questions.”

Newby closed with an emphatic rejection of the majority’s view that partisan gerrymandering violates citizens’ constitutional rights. He wrote: “In summary, none of the constitutional provisions cited by plaintiffs prohibit the practice of partisan gerrymandering.”

North Carolina Republican lawmakers’ power grab will likely be rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court, but clearly North Carolina’s new high court is ready to let the lawmakers have their way. One of its early steps will likely be to revisit the state Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the legislature must provide more public school funding under the Leandro case agreement. Another will be to approve a new Republican-drawn congressional redistricting map for 2024 that could effectively eliminate as many as four of the seven Democratic House incumbents.

Democrats will challenge such moves, but their protests will come before a court likely to agree with the chief justice that “legislative responsibilities” such as funding schools and drawing fair election districts “are not reviewable.”

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-829-4512, or nbarnett@ news observer.com