Supreme Court to hear controversial election-law case

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case that could radically reshape the way federal elections are conducted. At issue is a new legal theory that could conceivably give state legislatures virtually unchecked power over federal elections and erode major principles of democracy. The "independent state legislature theory," referred to as ISL, could give state legislatures independent power to put in place all manner of election rules, without any available review by state courts. In its most extreme form, the theory could eliminate not just state judicial power over elections, but governors' vetoes, and it might even allow state legislatures to certify presidential electors who were not approved by the voters, an idea that Donald Trump sought, unsuccessfully, to put forth in 2020. The case before the court is a perhaps more modest exercise of the conservative ISL theory.

The North Carolina state legislature, dominated by Republicans, is seeking to overturn a decision by the state Supreme Court. That court ruled that the Republican legislature, in drawing new congressional district lines after the 2020 Census, had violated the state constitution with an extreme partisan gerrymander. The court twice ordered the legislature to redraw the map, and when those efforts came up short, the state court, with the aid of court-appointed election experts, redrew new lines itself. The result was that in a state that is closely divided between Republican and Democratic voters, the new map produced an equally divided congressional delegation, seven seats for each party, instead of the lopsided 10 or 11 GOP seats that would have been produced by the Republican plan. Although the state constitution allows the court-drawn plan to remain in place for only one election cycle, the Republican legislature cried foul and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Timothy Moore, the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives, argues that "if you look at our state constitution, nowhere does it mention, at any point, involvement by the courts in any way."