US Supreme Court quashes state-level officials’ bid to control federal elections

The U.S. Supreme Court building is seen in Washington, U.S., April 6, 2023. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to give politicians at the state level more power over federal elections by limiting the ability of state courts to review their actions, handing a defeat to Republican lawmakers in North Carolina.

The 6-3 decision, authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a 2022 ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court against the Republican legislators. In doing so, the high court declined to embrace a once-marginal legal theory now favored by many conservatives that would remove any role of state courts and state constitutions in regulating presidential and congressional elections.

The legal theory, called “independent state legislature” doctrine, is based in part on the U.S. Constitution’s statement that the “times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

“The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” Roberts wrote of that constitutional provision.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision.

The case began as a fight over a map drawn by the Republican lawmakers for the state’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives districts – one that the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked as unlawfully biased against Democratic voters. Another state court replaced that map with one drawn by a bipartisan group of experts, and that one was in effect for the November 2022 elections.

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The Supreme Court’s action comes after North Carolina’s top court in April, following a change of partisan composition on that court, overruled its previous decision that had invalidated the Republican-drawn electoral map.

The North Carolina Supreme Court, whose judges are elected by the voters in the state, flipped in the November elections from a having a 4-3 Democratic majority to a 5-2 Republican majority. In its April decision, that court determined that state courts do not have the power to rein in electoral map drawing by politicians to entrench one party in power, a practice known as partisan gerrymandering.

Last year, when that court had a majority of Democratic judges, it ruled that a map of the congressional districts unlawfully disadvantaged Democrats and that partisan gerrymandering violates the North Carolina state constitution.

Gerrymandering is a practice involving the manipulation of electoral district boundaries to marginalize a certain set of voters and increase the influence of others.

Legislative districts across the country are redrawn to reflect population changes documented in the nationwide census conducted by the federal government every decade. North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature adopted a new voting map following the 2020 U.S. census.

Critics of the “independent state legislature” doctrine, including numerous legal scholars, Democrats and liberal voting rights advocates, have painted it as a threat to American democratic norms. These critics have said its application would let legislatures easily pass further voting restrictions or pursue extreme partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court in 2019 barred federal judges from curbing partisan gerrymandering.

The doctrine has gained ground among conservatives and Republican politicians, who have passed new laws and restrictions in numerous states they have said are aimed at combating voter fraud. These efforts accelerated in the aftermath of Republican former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.

The North Carolina Republicans argued that the Constitution gives state legislatures – and not other entities such as state courts – authority over election rules and electoral district maps. They contended that the state court usurped the North Carolina General Assembly’s authority under that provision to regulate federal elections.

Numerous plaintiffs, including Democratic voters, sued after North Carolina’s legislature passed its version of the congressional map in 2021. The plaintiffs argued that the map violated the North Carolina state constitution’s provisions concerning free elections and freedom of assembly, among others.

Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration argued against the Republican position when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in December.