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‘An existential threat’: Legal expert breaks down the Supreme Court case that could radically reshape US elections
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‘An existential threat’: Legal expert breaks down the Supreme Court case that could radically reshape US elections
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On Wednesday, December 7, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Moore v. Harper, a case that deals with partisan gerrymandering and redistricting in North Carolina as well as a far-right legal idea known as the independent state legislature theory (often abbreviated as ISL). It is the ISL part that has civil libertarians especially worried; the ISL, in its most severe form, argues that only state legislatures should be allowed to govern the administration of elections in individual states — not governors, not judges, not state supreme courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the ISL over the years. But civil libertarians and legal experts fear that if the radical-right 2022 edition of the High Court accepts the ISL as valid, it could have dire consequences for democracy in the United States. Imagine a scenario in which a Democratic presidential candidate wins Wisconsin, for example, in 2024 or 2028 but MAGA Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature want to give the state’s electoral votes to the Republican nominee who lost; such a scenario, according to civil libertarians and experts on constitutional law, is not far-fetched if the High Court accepts the ISL in its most radical form.
Moore v. Harper isn’t about former President Donald Trump per se. But in an article published by The Atlantic on November 29, legal expert Quinta Jurecic (who is a fellow at the Brookings Institution) emphasizes that the case reflects the influence of Trump and his MAGA movement.
READ MORE: How a pending Supreme Court case could determine whether US democracy ‘lives or dies’: legal expert
“At the center of Moore is a ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court throwing out an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map put together by the state’s Republican legislature, which the Court found violated the state constitution,” Jurecic explains. “The GOP lawmakers are now challenging that ruling before the Supreme Court, arguing that, under the independent state legislature theory, the state court lacked the authority to involve itself in the legislature’s work…. The Constitution gives states the power to decide how they select members of Congress and pick presidential electors.”
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