Could Republican state lawmakers in the capital of their state overule district and local officals to control voting ?
Do state courts get axed out of this?
Could Federal House districts be changed by legislators over voters wishes?
Will THIS Supreme Court keep throwing out established law?
Are they being used as a political trap door against Democrats and those who seek to control the political process in America to their advantage against the voters will?….
Redistircting manuevers by political parties got Republicans a small majority this time….
The High Court could help them get better at it….
The Republican leaders of North Carolina’s legislature told the Supreme Court that the Constitution’s “carefully drawn lines place the regulation of federal elections in the hands of state legislatures, Congress and no one else.”
Three conservative justices already have voiced some support for the idea that the state court had improperly taken powers given by the Constitution when it comes to federal elections. A fourth has written approvingly about limiting the power of state courts in this area.
But the Supreme Court has never invoked what is known as the independent state legislature theory. It was, though, mentioned in a separate opinion by three conservatives in the Bush v. Gore case that settled the 2000 presidential election.
If the court were to recognize it now, opponents of the concept argue, the effects could be much broader than just redistricting.
The most robust ruling for North Carolina Republicans could undermine more than 170 state constitutional provisions, over 650 state laws delegating authority to make election policies to state and local officials, and thousands of regulations down to the location of polling places, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law….
…
The arguments are taking place a day after the final contest of the 2022 midterms, the Georgia Senate runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.
In that contest, state courts ruled in favor of Democrats to allow for voting on the Saturday before the election, over the objections of Republicans.
Jason Snead, of the conservative Honest Elections Project, said the case is an opportunity for the high court to rein in out-of-control state courts which are being pushed by Democratic attorneys to effectively create new rules governing voting, including the Georgia example….
…
Chief Justice John Roberts’ record on this question gives both sides some hope. In 2015, he wrote a strong dissent from the court’s decision upholding an independent redistricting commission in Arizona.
Roberts wrote that the Constitution does not permit “a state to wholly exclude ‘the Legislature’ from redistricting. ”
But in 2019, Roberts wrote the court’s majority opinion that closed federal courts to claims of partisan gerrymandering but noted state courts remained open. “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply,” he wrote, in an opinion joined by Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas.
The court’s other conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, has no track record in this area….