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THE BIGGEST ELECTIONS CASE OF THE YEAR
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent
 
This morning, the Supreme Court handed down a major decision in a case affecting the future of voting rights, state legislative power and political party influence.
 
The specifics? In a 6-3 decision, the high court ruled against North Carolina Republicans and the theory of the “independent state legislature doctrine” — the idea that state legislatures have the right to make election rules with little oversight from state courts. The opinion was in favor of voters and voting rights groups who said the Republican map was rigged unconstitutionally and that courts should be able to hear their case against it. 
 
The opinion keeps the status quo. And in modern politics, that is significant.
 
Here is a quick breakdown.

• The case is Moore v. Harper. Named for Republican Rep. Timothy Moore, the North Carolina Speaker of the House, and Becky Harper, a North Carolina voter who sued the state over congressional maps that she and others decried as partisan gerrymanders .
• The legal questions are large, centered on partisan gerrymandering: Do state legislatures have absolute power to draw congressional maps, with no appeal to state courts? Or can state courts hear objections and step in when they find the maps are unconstitutional?
• The theory in question: The “independent state legislature” theory argues that state courts CANNOT weigh in on election logistics, including maps, passed by state legislatures. The theory could have given a political party in control of a legislature more power to draw partisan maps, potentially entrenching years’ or decades’ worth of advantage.
• What does the ruling mean? State legislatures will NOT be able to make an end-run around state courts with potentially gerrymandered maps. 
• What does this mean politically?  This is a win for some marginalized groups and potentially for Democrats who can continue to challenge maps in conservative-led states. (Though Democrats have lost gerrymandering cases in states they lead, like New York, more cases swing the other way.)
• A joint majority. Of the six justices who backed the ruling, three are Republican-nominated: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. And three were nominated by Democrats: Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.

• The opinion, written by Roberts, is 25 pages long. (And that is with some very wide margins.) It is direct and firm. You can read it here. 
• Central to all of this is the “Elections Clause” in the U.S. Constitution. It reads, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations …"
• North Carolina Republicans argued that the clause means state courts cannot block any maps the legislature might construct, even if those courts found they violate the state constitution. Because the Constitution gives that power to the “Legislature” alone.
• But Roberts opened his opinion wielding a cornerstone of constitutional law, with this quote from 1803’s Marbury v. Madison: “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” In other words, courts interpret the law.
• Roberts then leads readers through a history lesson, referencing James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist Papers and early cases in North Carolina itself. It’s a nice read.

• There were three: Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.
• In his dissent, Thomas argued that the stakes in the North Carolina case are essentially decided, that the map in question is cemented and therefore the Supreme Court has no role in the case. “This is a straightforward case of mootness,” he wrote. (Roberts disputed this notion in his opinion, writing the maps are still very much in play.)
• Thomas warned that this could return the court to more difficult decisions like 2000’s Bush v. Gore, upon which the outcome of the presidential election rested. This case also involved questions around state court review. Through its latest ruling in North Carolina, “The majority opens a new field for Bush-style controversies over state election law — and a far more uncertain one,” Thomas wrote.