The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that state constitutions can protect voting rights in federal elections and state courts can enforce those provisions, in a key opinion that should safeguard the integrity of the 2024 election.
In a practical sense, Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision will not make a difference in North Carolina, where Republicans retook control of the state Supreme Court after the 2022 election and the new GOP majority has since reversed a prior court’s ruling that redrawn congressional maps violated the state constitution with an extreme partisan gerrymander. That means that the legislature’s politically lopsided map will likely return in some form for the 2024 election, with little likelihood that it will change for the rest of the decade.
“Although the Elections Clause does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law, federal courts must not abandon their duty to exercise judicial review,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “This Court has an obligation to ensure that state court interpretations of state law do not evade federal law. For example, States ‘may not sidestep the Takings Clause by disavowing traditional property interests.’ … While the Court does not adopt a test by which state court interpretations of state law can be measured in cases implicating the Elections Clause, state courts may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
At issue in the case was Article 1 of in the U.S. Constitution, which says that the “Times, places and manner of holding…
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