Be forewarned; the progressive communist democrats will attack the Supreme Court again…

This time it will be Moore v. Harper (Docket 21–1271), which the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear next term as the latest raison d'être to proclaim that the wrong decision will result in the end of democracy.

The issue is gerrymandering and how district boundaries are drawn – leaving the matter up to the state legislatures and excluding interference from the Executive and the Judiciary.

The issue is informed by the language of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Elections Clause in Article One, which states, "The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof."

The theory of the independent state legislatures doctrine implies only the state legislatures may make any decisions related to election law and prevent any actions from courts or the executive branch from challenging it.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari on June 30, 2022, and the question to be presented is…

Whether a State's judicial branch may nullify the regulations governing the "Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives . . . prescribed . . . by the Legislature thereof," U.S. CONST. art. I, § 4, cl. 1, and replace them with regulations of the state courts' own devising, based on vague state constitutional provisions purportedly vesting the state judiciary with power to prescribe whatever rules it deems appropriate to ensure a "fair" or "free" election. <Source: SCOTUS>

The trigger…

In an order entered on February 4, the North Carolina Supreme Court invalidated the North Carolina General Assembly’s congressional maps and remanded to state trial court for remedial proceedings. Rather than seek immediate review in this Court, Applicants engaged in a good-faith effort to craft a congressional map that would be valid under the state Supreme Court’s order.

Yet in an order entered on February 23, the North Carolina trial court rejected that map and instead mandated the use of a new map that had been created by a group of Special Masters and their team of assistants—who, to make matters worse, designed their own, judicially-crafted map after engaging in ex parte communications with experts for the plaintiffs. Applicants immediately sought a stay from the North Carolina Supreme Court, but that stay was promptly denied. <Source: SCOTUS>

Not only did the North Carolina Supreme Court improperly craft their own map, but they also did it in a partisan manner with the assistance of a plaintiff's experts in the absence of the opposition.

Why this is important…

As we saw in the 2020 election, the United States Supreme Court rejected hearing a similar argument from Pennsylvania. The failure of the Court to rule that electoral matters were the sole jurisdiction of the state legislature opened up a can of worms where election commissions and the courts bypassed the state legislatures to craft rules that weakened election controls and seemingly promoted election "irregularities." (i.e., election rigging)

A favorable Supreme Court ruling upholding the independent state legislatures doctrine will prevent the progressive communist democrats from interfering with the 2024 presidential election by turning to the Obama/Biden regime's Executive Branch Department of Justice, headed by the corrupt and partisan Attorney General Merrick Garland, to decide state electoral matters using their bogus "sue and settle" modus operandi or for tying up the matter with court challenges to block implementation using a partisan federal judge willing to issue a temporary restraining order.

.Already, cries of angst and charges of pre-rigging the 2024 election are filling the media…

Even Governing Magazine went off the deep end...

The Supreme Court Case That Could ‘End American Democracy’
What seems like a narrow point of law could have profound consequences for American elections — including the race for the White House in 2024.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case in its fall term that has the potential to make partisan gerrymandering an unstoppable political force and gut voting rights protections. That may be a best-case scenario.

“This would be the most disruptive opinion in election law — ground shaking, groundbreaking, revolutionary, whatever word you could use,” says Douglas Spencer, a law professor at the University of Colorado. "I think it would be worse than disruptive. I think it would be destructive."

The independent state legislature theory not only cuts against the American system of checks and balances, but would deliver a blow to federalism, potentially taking state courts out of the equation when it comes to election law, leaving federal courts the only arbiter.

“The independent state legislature theory is a lawless power grab by the federal courts masquerading as deference to a romanticized vision of the state legislature that fails to take state institutional design choices seriously on their own terms,” write Leah Litman and Katherine Shaw in a forthcoming law review article. “The dangerousness and lawlessness of the independent state legislature theory are difficult to overstate.”<Source>

Another Alito leak is unnecessary…

I hope the Alito dissent is the precursor to the actual decision.

This case presents an exceptionally important and recurring question of constitutional law, namely, the extent of a state court’s authority to reject rules adopted by a state legislature for use in conducting federal elections. There can be no doubt that this question is of great national importance. But we have not yet found an opportune occasion to address the issue.

We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better. This case presented a good opportunity to consider the issue, but unfortunately the Court has again found the occasion inopportune.

In my view, the applicants have shown that the question presented by this case easily satisfies our usual criteria for certiorari, see this Court’s Rule 10, and it is also likely that they would prevail on the merits if review were granted.

The Elections Clause provides that rules governing the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives” must be “prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Art. I, §4, cl. 1 (emphasis added). This Clause could have said that these rules are to be prescribed “by each State,” which would have left it up to each State to decide which branch, component, or officer of the state government should exercise that power, as States are generally free to allocate state power as they choose.

But that is not what the Elections Clause says. Its language specifies a particular organ of a state government, and we must take that language seriously.

In this case, after North Carolina gained a seat in the House of Representatives, the North Carolina General Assembly twice adopted new congressional districting maps. But on both occasions, the State Supreme Court rejected those maps and ultimately ordered that the 2022 election proceed on the basis of a map of the court’s own creation. The court justified its actions on the ground that the General Assembly’s maps constituted partisan gerrymanders and thus violated a congeries of state constitutional provisions. But none of those provisions says anything about partisan gerrymandering, and all but one make no reference to elections at all.

The applicants, who are members of the North Carolina Legislature, contend that the State Supreme Court took it upon itself to decide the “Manner” in which the State’s congressional elections will be held and that the court therefore usurped the power that the Elections Clause confines to the “Legislature.”

The other side answers that state election laws must be interpreted and applied by the state courts, that this is what the State Supreme Court did in this case when it interpreted and applied the State Constitution, and that this Court has no authority to overrule a state supreme court’s interpretation of state law.

Both sides advance serious arguments, but based on the briefing we have received, my judgment is that the applicants’ argument is stronger. The question presented is one of federal not state law because the state legislature, in promulgating rules for congressional elections, acts pursuant to a constitutional mandate under the Elections Clause.

And if the language of the Elections Clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections. I think it is likely that the applicants would succeed in showing that the North Carolina Supreme Court exceeded those limits. <Source: SCOTUS>

Bottom line…

While the decision should be a 9-0 affirmation of the U.S. Constitution, it is more likely to be a 6-3 decision with the Court's liberals shouting against the wind.

If the Court does screw this up, electoral chaos will become a fact of life, and we will be majorly screwed.

-- steve