State lawmakers don’t have final say on elections

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that state legislatures do not have the ultimate authority to govern federal elections, handing a defeat to North Carolina Republican lawmakers who had tried to check the power of the state’s highest court to throw out congressional maps.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the Elections Clause of the Constitution gives states wide authority to set the “Times, Places and Manner” of votes for congressional office.

However, Roberts added, that clause “does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.”

“The idea that courts may review legislative action was so ‘long and well established’ by the time we decided Marbury [v. Madison] in 1803 that Chief Justice [John] Marshall referred to judicial review as ‘one of the fundamental principles of our society,’” Roberts wrote. “We are asked to decide whether the Elections Clause carves out an exception to this basic principle. We hold that it does not.”

The Tar Heel State GOPers were appealing a decision by North Carolina’s Democrat-majority Supreme Court to toss House district maps approved in 2021 by the Republican-controlled state legislature on the grounds that they violated the state constitution.

Tuesday’s decision has little practical effect after the North Carolina Supreme Court’s newly elected Republican majority reversed its redistricting ruling and upheld a photo ID requirement for voters this past April. Republicans and Democrats each have seven House seats under the current court-drawn map, which will be redrafted ahead of the 2024 election.

However, the prospect of the justices deferring to state lawmakers under the independent legislature theory and minimizing state courts’ role in the election process had meant the case was closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential vote.

Roberts — who was joined in his opinion by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — left the door open to limits on state court efforts to police elections for Congress and president.

“As in other areas where the exercise of federal authority or the vindication of federal rights implicates questions of state law, we have an obligation to ensure that state court interpretations of that law do not evade federal law,” the chief justice wrote. “… We hold only that state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, with Thomas arguing that the subsequent actions by North Carolina’s highest court made the case moot.