The Supreme Court announced Thursday that it will hear a case this fall that could alter state election laws across the country.
Moore v. Harper is focusing on a new North Carolina voting map created by court-appointed experts after previous maps proposed by the Republican-led state legislature were overturned.
The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in February that the maps offered by the state general assembly were partisan gerrymanders, violating the provisions of free speech, freedom of assembly, and equal protection of the constitution. state.
But the state legislature appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to address the issue of district redistribution and possibly restore the map drawn by Republicans.
At the heart of the petitioners’ argument is the theory of the so-called “independent state legislature,” a marginal legal concept driven by a small group of conservative advocates that would give state legislatures broad authority to hold federal elections without traditional oversight. of a state constitution. or the judiciary, which these lawyers consider to have no right to intervene in elected representatives.
Observers say there could be major ramifications of the Supreme Court’s final decision.
“This has the potential to profoundly change the rules of the game in time for the upcoming presidential election,” ABC News political director Rick Klein said. “Depending on how far the Supreme Court goes, it could virtually invite Republican-controlled legislatures to rewrite centuries-old laws that ensure the candidate who gets the most votes in a state gets their election votes, and could even free the legislatures to choose voters on their own ”.
“It could end up making it a lot easier for a future state legislature to really do what Trump’s allies so desperately wanted to be done after the 2020 election,” Klein added.
The theory of the “independent state legislature” argues that under the electoral clause and the voter clause of the U.S. Constitution, state legislators can determine how elections are conducted without controls and counterweights by others. government actors, such as state constitutions, courts, or vetoes of governors.
U.S. Capitol police patrol outside the Supreme Court as protesters march through Senate office buildings in Washington, DC, on June 29, 2022.
Bryan Olin Dozier / NurPhoto via Shutterstock
The election clause states: “The time, place and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time by law make or amend such regulations, except with respect to the Chusing Sites [choosing] Senators “.
The voter clause states that “each State shall appoint, in such manner as its legislature may indicate, a number of electors, equal to the total number of senators and representatives to whom the State may be entitled in Congress: but no senator or The representative or person who has an office of trust or benefit in the United States shall be appointed a voter. “
The voter clause was central to the unsuccessful conspiracy of former President Donald Trump and his allies to use “fake voters” to nullify his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Thomas Wolf, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said the theory contradicts the intent of the drafters of the Constitution.
“It’s contrary to more than 200 years of practice, to the way we organize elections, and it’s contrary to the Supreme Court’s precedent of more than a century,” Wolf told ABC News. “It’s also disastrous as a political issue.”
Wolf warned that the argument, if accepted by the high court, could lead to the removal of protections against voting discrimination and deprive election administrators of their ability to organize and regulate elections efficiently. .
The North Carolina Supreme Court said in February that the theory “would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case, saying Thursday he was “confident” that the judges would agree with his view that the The United States Constitution “explicitly grants the authority of the General Assembly to draw districts.”
“This case is not only critical to electoral integrity in North Carolina, but it has implications for nationwide election security,” Moore argued.
On January 17, 2021, law enforcement guards guarded the state capitol building in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.
Logan Cyrus / AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The Supreme Court first faced the case in March, when the North Carolina state legislature called for emergency assistance. Judges eventually denied that request, but three conservatives at the bank said they would have granted the suspension of the North Carolina Supreme Court order.
“This case presents an exceptionally important and recurring issue of constitutional law, namely, the scope of the authority of a state court to reject rules adopted by a state legislature for use in conducting federal elections. “Judge Samuel Alito wrote in the dissent. Judges Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined.
Helen White, a lawyer for the non-partisan group Protect Democracy, said in a press conference on Thursday that the Supreme Court had ruled on the issue of partisan manipulation just three years ago.
A Rucho v. Common Cause, the court said that while it would not intervene in partisan gerrymandering police, state courts and constitutions were a means to regulate gerrymandering in congressional elections.
White said that if the court now adopted the theory of the “independent state legislature,” it would be a “radical pivot of what they themselves have said about the problems in this case.”
Moore v. Harper will be discussed before the nine judges in the term that begins this October, with a decision handed down in time for the 2024 campaign.
– Devin Dwyer of ABC News contributed to this report.