The United States Supreme Court rejected the bid to grant lawmakers unchecked power over elections on Tuesday (June 27). This bid, which had support from many conservatives, sought to provide state legislatures with extensive authority to establish rules for presidential and congressional elections and draw electoral maps that would heavily favor the party already in control.
According to a Reuters report, the justices ruled against Republican state legislators in a case involving North Carolina’s 14 US House of Representative districts. The state’s top court had previously blocked the legislators’ map, deeming it unlawfully biased against Democratic voters.
The Republican legislators urged the Supreme Court justices to adopt the independent state legislature doctrine, which would eliminate the role of state courts and state constitutions in regulating federal elections. This doctrine is partly based on the US Constitution’s provision stating that the time, place, and manner of federal elections should be prescribed by each state’s legislature.
Chief Justice Roberts, in reference to the constitutional provision, wrote, “The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review,” as reported by Reuters.
Critics of the independent state legislature doctrine, including legal scholars and Democrats, view it as a threat to American democratic norms. They argue that its application would allow legislatures to easily enact further voting restrictions and engage in extreme partisan gerrymandering, a practice aimed at manipulating electoral district boundaries to marginalize certain voters and enhance the influence of others.
The White House expressed its approval of the Supreme Court ruling, stating that the bid would have enabled politicians to undermine the will of the people. White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton highlighted the administration’s commitment to strengthening voting rights and safeguarding the freedom of all Americans to have their voices heard at the ballot box.
“This has been an enormous priority for the president and the vice president since the day that they entered office, to strengthen and shore up voting rights in this country. And so we’re pleased that the Supreme Court rejected the extreme legal theory presented in this case, which would have interfered with state governments, which would have opened the door for politicians to undermine the will of the people, and would have threatened the freedom of all Americans to have their voices heard at the ballot box,” Dalton said.
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