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The Supreme Court said Tuesday that the North Carolina Supreme Court did not violate the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution when it invalidated the state’s 2022 congressional map, rejecting a broad version of a controversial legal theory from the Legislature the Independent State promoted by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 6-3 opinion.
The case had captured the nation’s attention because Republican lawmakers in North Carolina were asking the justices to adopt a dormant legal theory, arguing that state courts and other state entities have a limited role in reviewing election rules set by state legislatures when it comes to federal elections.
“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restrictions when legislatures act under the power granted them by the Election Clause,” Roberts wrote.
The court allowed federal courts to have some supervisory role over state courts in certain circumstances, and Roberts wrote that “state courts do not have free rein.”
“Federal courts,” Roberts said, “must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review.”
“When state legislatures act pursuant to their Election Clause authority, they engage in lawmaking subject to the typical limitations on the exercise of that power,” he wrote. “In short, our precedents have long rejected the view that legislative action under the Election Clause is purely federal in character, governed only by the restrictions found in the Federal Constitution.”
Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The decision will have ramifications for future elections across the country.
Former President Barack Obama said the case had the potential to “dismantle our system of checks and balances.”
“This ruling is a resounding rejection of the far-right theory that has been peddled by election denialists and extremists who seek to undermine our democracy,” Obama said in a statement.
North Carolina’s controversy arose after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s 2022 congressional map as an illegal partisan gerrymander, replacing it with court-drawn maps that favored democrats
After the state’s high court ruled, North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the state’s Supreme Court had exceeded its authority.
They relied on the Constitution’s election clause which states that rules governing the “manner of holding elections for senators and representatives” must be prescribed in “each state by the legislature thereof.” Under the independent state legislature theory, the lawmakers argued, state legislatures should be able to make rules with little or no interference from state courts.
The justices heard oral arguments on the case last winter, and some of them appeared to express some support for one version of the doctrine.
But after the case was argued at the Supreme Court, and before the justices could weigh in, new developments occurred in North Carolina.
After the last election, the North Carolina Supreme Court changed its majority to Republican. In April, the new North Carolina Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision, holding that the state Constitution gives state courts no role in controlling partisan gerrymandering.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent, joined in full by Justice Neil Gorsuch and in part by Justice Samuel Alito, arguing that the court should have dismissed the case as moot, given how circumstances developed in around the case after the judges heard it.
“In short, this case is over and the petitioners won,” Thomas wrote, referring to how a newly reconstituted North Carolina Supreme Court heard the case again this year and reversed its decision in in favor of the defenders of the map drawn by the Republicans. “It follows that there is no live controversy before this Court.”
In a section to which only Gorsuch has joined, Thomas criticized the merits of the majority opinion on Tuesday.
Thomas accused the majority opinion of opening “a new field for Bush-style controversies over state election law, and a much more uncertain one,” an allusion to the blockbuster election disputes that they emerged in the 2000 presidential race.
Thomas wrote that he is “scared[ed]” that the framework proposed by the majority “will have the effect of inverting large tracts of state constitutional law with the character of a federal question not open to meaningful or principled decision by the federal courts.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
