Supreme Court Considering Dropping Term’s Major Election Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court appears to be considering dropping the current term’s most consequential election case now that a ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court has likely rendered the justices’ opinion moot.

The case, Moore v. Harper, tests an atypical approach to state legislative power over congressional elections called the independent state legislature theory.

Adherents of the theory hold that the U.S. Constitution gave state legislatures absolute power over congressional elections, regardless of any constraints imposed by their own state constitutions.

Opponents of the theory dismiss it as legal quackery, but fear a broad ruling in Moore, which, among other things, revolves around the validity of a district mapping scheme, could upend elections laws and citizen initiatives all across the country and lead to a flurry of new efforts to gerrymander congressional district maps.

But as previously reported by The Well News, the North Carolina Supreme Court last week vacated its earlier decision striking down the state’s new congressional map as an illegal partisan gerrymander in violation of the state constitution. 

The change of heart on the map came five months after Republicans prevailed in the November election and gained their first majority on the court in nearly a decade.

Writing for the new majority, Chief North Carolina Justice Paul Newby wrote that there is “no judicially manageable standard by which to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering claims.”

“Our Constitution expressly assigns the redistricting authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit limitations in the text,” Newby said later in the ruling. “Those limitations do not address partisan gerrymandering. It is not within the authority of this court to amend the Constitution to create such limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to another branch.”

On Thursday, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court invited the parties and Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to file supplemental briefs in the case, specifically addressing the question: “What is the effect on this court’s jurisdiction of the April 28, 2023, order of the North Carolina Supreme Court?” 

The briefs, not to exceed 10 pages, are to be filed with the court’s clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before 2 p.m., on Thursday, May 11. 

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