In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that limited state courts’ ability to wrest control of elections law from state legislatures in a North Carolina redistricting case. The ruling does not, however, entirely stymie activist attempts to use courts to override elected legislators’ decisions about election law.
In Tuesday’s Moore v. Harper decision, SCOTUS held that the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause “does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.” But it also failed to defend state legislatures’ constitutional right to control elections law, including redistricting, as shielded from court review.
“For the first time, the Supreme Court has ruled definitively that there is a limit to the power of state courts to interpret election law,” said Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, in a statement. “Today’s ruling keeps alive the left-wing drive to abuse the courts for partisan gain, but it is no blank check for judges to embrace Marc Elias’ fringe and novel legal theories in order to skew the rules of democracy in favor of the Left.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Roberts wrote, “[S]tate courts do not have free rein,” even though legislatures are not exempt from “ordinary constraints imposed by state law.”
“State courts retain the authority to apply state
