Remember the fringe “independent state legislature” case at the Supreme Court that threatens to upend elections and democracy as we know it? It could be going away, thanks to the Republican takeover of the North Carolina Supreme Court.
As I wrote last month, the state court’s new GOP majority decided to reconsider two pro-voting decisions handed down by the previous Democratic majority. Before that, the state court had only decided to rehear two cases since 1993, a feat already matched by the new Republican majority ushered in by the November elections.
It wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the Supreme Court doesn’t decide a case that could throw our elections into greater chaos.
One of those two cases implicates the partisan gerrymandering issue at stake in that fringe election case pending at the Supreme Court, Moore v. Harper. That’s the one in which Donald Trump allies like disgraced lawyer John Eastman want the justices to give state legislatures unfettered control over federal elections. The case was argued in December and we’ve been waiting on a decision.
But the North Carolina majority’s move apparently caught the Supreme Court’s attention. On Thursday, the justices asked for supplemental briefing on the impact of the state court granting rehearing. After the Supreme Court receives that briefing, due March 20, we’ll await the justices’ next move, including potentially dismissing the case from their docket.
To be clear, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the Supreme Court doesn’t decide a case that could throw our elections into greater chaos. However, the partisan machinations in North Carolina that are prompting the possible mooting of the case at the high court are more concerning. If the Supreme Court doesn’t decide the issue, then that doesn’t mean it’s going away, just that it could be in the North Carolina court’s hands — at least for now. And given the state court’s brazen step of deciding to reconsider the matter right after a change in its political makeup, people concerned with democracy should be just as wary of where voting rights are headed. Related:
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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