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WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (AP) — The Supreme Court is about to face a new election case, a Republican-led challenge to the justices’ new ruling that could significantly increase state legislation. power in congressional and presidential elections.
The court is scheduled to hear arguments on Wednesday in the North Carolina case, where Republicans tried to bolster them heavily in congressional districts but were blocked by a Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court because the GOP map violated the state constitution.
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The court’s map gave each party seven seats in last month’s midterm elections in competitive North Carolina.
The justices questioned whether a provision of the U.S. Constitution that empowers state legislatures to make rules for the “time, place and manner” of congressional elections would exclude state courts from the process.
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“This is the single most important case in American history about American democracy — and American democracy,” said former federal judge Michael Luttig.
The Republican leader of the North Carolina legislature told the Supreme Court that the Constitution’s “carefully drawn lines place oversight of federal elections in the hands of state legislatures, Congress, and no one else.”
Three conservative justices have voiced support for the idea that state courts have improperly exercised their constitutional powers in federal elections. A fourth wrote favorably about limiting the power of state courts in this area.
But the Supreme Court never invoked the so-called theory of independent state legislatures. However, three conservatives made the point in separate opinions in the Bush v. Gore case that resolved the 2000 presidential election.
If courts now recognize it, opponents of the concept argue, the implications could go beyond redistricting.
According to the Brennan Center, the most powerful ruling against North Carolina Republicans could undermine more than 170 articles of the state constitution, more than 650 state laws authorizing state and local officials to set election policy, and thousands of items as detailed as Regulations on Polling Place Locations NYU School of Law Department of Justice.
Luttig has suggested to former Vice President Mike Pence that after the 2020 election he does not have the authority to reject electoral votes to make decisions about federal elections, including congressional redistricting.
The group includes former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, law professor Steven Calabresi, founder of the Conservative Federalist Society and Benjamin Ginsburg, a Republican candidate and longtime lawyer for the party.
“Unfortunately, confidence in our elections is at an all-time low because of sustained and widespread efforts to sow mistrust and spread disinformation,” Ginsburg wrote in a Supreme Court filing. The petitioner in the case The proposed version of the independent state legislation theory has the potential to make a bad situation worse, exacerbate current political polarization, and further erode confidence in our elections. “
The debate took place a day after the final contest in the 2022 midterm elections, the Georgia Senate runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.
In that race, a state court ruled in favor of Democrats over objections from Republicans, allowing voting to take place on the Saturday before the election.
Jason Snead of the conservative Honest Elections Project said the case is an opportunity for the high court to rein in runaway state courts that Democratic lawyers are pushing to effectively enact new voting rules, including Georgia’s example .
“We’ve seen fairly widespread attempts to use the courts to rewrite election laws if those laws don’t fit the partisan agenda,” Sneed said on a call with reporters. “We don’t want to see that happen when it goes against the Constitution.”
He was among supporters of the high court’s intervention, arguing the case did not represent a “threat to democracy”.
A group of New York voters wrote in a court filing that judges could write a narrow opinion imposing restrictions on state courts without undermining choices made by New York and other states to limit partisan gerrymandering.
New Yorkers implicitly acknowledged that Republicans would not necessarily benefit if the courts gave state legislatures more power to draw congressional boundaries.
During the last redistricting cycle, the states that used separate redistricting commissions rather than legislatures were primarily Democratic-dominated states. The committee picked up 95 House seats in states with Democratic legislatures and governors, compared with 12 in Republican-controlled states. A ruling that would give the Legislature ultimate power to redistrict districts could eliminate the committees and allow Democrats to redraw major parts of the House map.
“The bottom line is that the implications of this fringe theory are going to be dire,” said former Attorney General Eric Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “This could trigger a wave of constituency discrimination on both sides.”
Even less drastic changes won’t necessarily tilt the Republican way on a national redistricting map that’s essentially a tie and state court rulings that cost Democrats as many House seats as Republicans.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene in the North Carolina case in March, allowing the use of court-drawn districts this year.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented. Writing for the trio, Alito said: “State courts must limit the power of state courts to undo actions taken by state legislatures when making federal election rules. The court went beyond those limits.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh has written separately on the need for federal courts to oversee the conduct of state courts in federal elections.
Chief Justice John Roberts’ record on the issue offers some hope for both sides. In 2015, he strongly disapproved of the court’s decision to uphold an independent redistricting commission in Arizona.
Roberts wrote that the Constitution does not allow “a state to completely exclude the legislature” from redistricting. “
But in 2019, Roberts wrote the court’s majority opinion that shut down partisan gerrymandering charges in federal court, but noted that state courts remain open. “State laws and provisions in state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply,” he wrote in the Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas opinion.
Another conservative justice on the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, has no record on this front.
In North Carolina, regardless of the outcome of the high court case, another round of redistricting is expected next year and a map that includes more Republican districts will be produced.
In last month’s election, voters overturned the state’s Supreme Court majority and picked two new Republican justices, giving the GOP a 5-2 victory, and the court is likely to side with the GOP, although it is uncertain More maps of constituencies. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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