The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a slew of contentious decisions in the past couple of years, but a ruling it made recently deserves widespread agreement and applause.
The justices ruled 6-3 in a case called “Moore v. Harper” to strike down an extreme authoritarian legal notion that would give state legislatures virtually unchecked powers to oversee federal elections.
The issue was raised in a case from North Carolina where that state’s Supreme Court had thrown out the Republican-controlled congressional-district maps. Those districts had been gerrymandered, meaning their boundary lines had been stretched, shrunken or otherwise skewed to favor Republican candidates. Last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled the maps “egregious and intentional gerrymandering.” Thus, the Court decided to use court-drawn district maps for the 2020 election.
However, North Carolina Republicans then claimed that the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause gives the state legislatures – not the courts – ultimate authority over election laws. They wanted the gerrymandered maps reinstated.
That was the argument presented to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a decision earlier this summer, six justices rejected that kind of state legislative authority. In the majority opinion, it stated, “The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.”
That North Carolina effort was nothing but an attempt to undermine democracy with an oligarchic system in which a fringe bunch of politicians could over-rule voters and seize power for themselves – never mind “majority rules.”
The Court’s ruling was exactly what so many election deniers dreaded to hear. If the Supreme Court had granted their “wish,” legislatures would have the authority to determine elections as if through a sinister sleight-of-hand, including the authority to certify slates of presidential electors who were not approved by the majority of voters in that particular state. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what desperate scheming manipulators tried to pull off in seven states in a pathetic, doomed attempt to overturn President Biden’s win in 2020.
Increasingly in this nation free-and-fair elections are under attack, to the point where many Americans are losing – or have already lost – faith in the elections process, which is the very foundation of our democracy.
If the Court had ruled otherwise, ceding total authority to legislatures when it comes to elections, what would have followed is more gerrymandering (potentially by both political parties), more types of voter suppression, purging of names from voting rolls, cuts to early voting and voting-by-mail and discriminatory barriers to voting access. In other words, a blatant sabotage of free-and-fair elections. An end to democracy.
Kudos to the six justices who rejected the reckless assault on democracy: Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Brett Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
What’s worrisome, however, is that such a vital, momentous decision should have been a slam dunk of 9-0. It’s chilling to know that justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel A. Alito voted against it.
