"They've preserved for themselves the right to be the ultimate arbiter of whether state courts have gone too far," he said. UCLA law professor Richard Hasen went further, noting that Tuesday's decision gives the federal courts a lot of new power over state courts. But he said that "at the same time, endorsed a weaker version of this independent state legislature doctrine, and this is going to sort of hang over the 2024 election." NYU law professor Richard Pildes called it "highly significant" that the court rejected the extreme view of the ISL theory. Election experts disagreed on the effect of the ruling The lawmakers contended that the federal Constitution's provision delegating to state legislatures the power to set the "times, places and manner" of elections means that only the state legislature can make election rules, not courts, and regardless of state constitutional provisions. As a result, the state court ultimately drew new congressional district lines for the 2020 election, and the GOP-dominated state legislature appealed to the U.S. Specifically at issue in the case was a decision by the North Carolina Supreme Court holding that the state legislature had violated state constitutional provisions barring partisan gerrymanders. But Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the second part of the Thomas dissent, which disputed the majority's conclusion on the merits of the case. Justice Samuel Alito joined that part of the dissent only. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the dissent, saying first that the case presented no live controversy anymore since a subsequent state supreme court decision had thrown out the original ruling. Joining Roberts in the majority were conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and the court's three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. How to know when courts do exceed that power? The court majority didn't say, leaving for another day the task of articulating a standard for determining when federal courts may tell a state court that it has gone too far in interpreting state law.Įlections Is drawing a voting map that helps a political party illegal? Only in some states To the contrary, he said, state legislative power is constrained by the federal and state constitutions, as well as ordinary state laws.Īt the same time, however, Roberts said that in overseeing election provisions, state courts "do not have free rein" to exceed "the ordinary bounds of judicial review." Constitution does not, as the lawmakers had claimed, insulate their actions from review by the state courts. Writing for the court majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday repudiated the most extreme form of a controversial legal theory that, if adopted, would have radically reshaped the way elections are conducted, giving state legislatures virtually unchecked power to decide election rules.īy a 6-to-3 vote, the court rejected the so-called Independent State Legislature theory advanced by the Republican-dominated North Carolina state legislature. Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on April 21.
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