US Supreme Court rejects independent state legislature theory in NC case Moore v. Harper
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a controversial political theory Tuesday, when it ruled on a high-profile redistricting case out of North Carolina that had been closely watched by political insiders and legal scholars nationwide.
Republican lawmakers lost their main legal argument, which was an attempt to eliminate many of the normal checks and balances surrounding election laws.
“This is a historic victory for the people of North Carolina and for American democracy," said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, one of the groups that won Tuesday in the fight against the state legislature’s legal case.
Despite losing on the main issue in the case, state Republican leaders were pleased that the court didn’t do anything to put a halt to their plans to redraw North Carolina’s congressional maps later this year. Those new maps, once drawn, will likely help Republicans flip multiple Democratic-held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives next year. Democrats hold a slim majority in the chamber.
The case, Moore v. Harper, is about redistricting and gerrymandering. But it's also about a bigger philosophical question of how much control state-level lawmakers should be allowed to have to bend the rules and give their party a leg up.
It was based on a controversial theory called the independent state legislature doctrine. Supporters of the theory said the Founding Fathers meant for state legislators to face few of the normal checks and balances when it comes to setting rules for elections.
In particular, the theory suggests, state courts should be banned from striking down a legislature's actions on federal elections as unconstitutional. Several of the courts more conservative justices have indicated they support the theory. But in Tuesday's opinion for the court's majority, Chief Justice John Roberts emphatically denied that reading of the Constitution.
"Since early in our nation’s history, courts have recognized their duty to evaluate the constitutionality of legislative acts," Roberts wrote.
Critics had said a ruling in favor of that theory could spell the end of American democracy, noting that it was also the same theory former President Donald Trump tried and failed to use to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper praised the decision Tuesday, but he also criticized Republican lawmakers in the state for what he described as other ongoing efforts to undermine democracy.
"This is a good decision that curbs some of the power of Republican state legislatures and affirms the importance of checks and balances," Cooper said in a statement Tuesday. "But Republican legislators in North Carolina and across the country remain a very real threat to democracy as they continue to pass laws to manipulate elections for partisan gain by interfering with the freedom to vote."
Two bills are moving forward in the state legislature that would change a number of rules for future elections statewide. Republicans have defended the changes as needed to help improve people's trust in the integrity of election results.
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, for whom the case is named, said in a statement Tuesday that even though the legislature lost, he's glad Republicans recently flipped control of the state Supreme Court — and that the new GOP majority there ruled that partisan gerrymandering doesn't violate the state constitution.
"Fortunately the current Supreme Court of North Carolina has rectified bad precedent from the previous majority, reaffirming the state constitutional authority of the NC General Assembly," Moore said. "We will continue to move forward with the redistricting process later this year."
What the ruling means for 2024
The ruling on Moore v. Harper was 6-3 as the court's conservative justices split over how to rule. Three of the conservatives dissented: Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
The court's liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — joined with Roberts and his fellow conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to form the majority.
Tuesday's ruling rejecting the independent state legislature theory was a blow to North Carolina GOP leaders and other conservatives across the country, including the three dissenters on the Supreme Court, who had been pushing for it to be approved.
Roberts wrote that despite the arguments made in favor of the theory, the U.S. Constitution "does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review."
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein's office argued against the legislature in court, representing the State Board of Elections, which said legitimizing the independent state legislature theory would introduce chaos into elections.
Stein, who is running for governor in 2024, wrote on social media that the ruling "reaffirmed the most central principle of our democracy: that the people, not politicians, have political power."
The ruling wasn't a total loss for North Carolina Republicans.
As Moore noted, the ruling allows legislative leaders to carry on with their plans to redraw the districts for North Carolina's 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives this summer. And the Republican-controlled legislature will likely enjoy more leeway to engage in partisan-motivated gerrymandering when they do redraw those maps, now that the state Supreme Court has switched from Democratic to Republican control.
The state's highest court had ruled in 2022, under a Democratic majority, that partisan gerrymandering violates the state constitution. That decision ultimately led to this U.S. Supreme Court case.
But this year, when Republicans flipped control of the state court, the new GOP majority undid the 2022 precedent, effectively ruling that legislative leaders are allowed to draw the maps in a way that will guarantee their political party a disproportionate amount of political power.
North Carolina currently has an evenly split Congressional delegation, with seven Republicans and seven Democrats, after the 2022 elections were held using court-ordered maps. But the map lawmakers had initially drawn in 2021, before it was ruled unconstitutional, would've given Republicans at least a 10-4 advantage in the Congressional map, and maybe an 11-3 edge.
Now that lawmakers can redraw the maps without fearing the state's highest court stepping in again, the new maps are likely to be similar.
