The Supreme Court has just refused to stay congressional maps for North Carolina and Pennsylvania in a decision that is good news for Democrats in both states (and for fair voting and redistricting advocates) but also has some hints that things may not go as well in the future. The news was sent out by Mark Joseph Stern on Twitter, along with some interesting analysis of what it all means:
In particular, Stern notes that the three dissenting justices in the NC case (apparently there were no dissents to the PA case) are endorsing the “independent state legislature theory”, a radical doctrine that was bandied about during the Big Lie promotion. It holds that legislatures have sole and unchecked authority over elections and that no other entity (including courts and state constitutions) can override this. It also seems that Kavanaugh may also be on board with this idea, but concurred in the court’s decision based on the Purcell v. Gonzalez principle that courts should not interfere in elections too close to their time. Since candidate filing has already closed in NC, this apparently was enough for him to allow these maps to be used, at least this one time.
What is amazing in this is two-fold. First, both Roberts and Barrett apparently do not support the independent state legislature theory, which means we still have five votes to keep this kind of electoral shenanigan from being given the stamp of constitutional approval. Second, we also had Alito doing a complete reverse from his concurrence with the Rucho decision that allowed state courts to act against partisan gerrymandering in the first place. We can only hope that this decision stands and that any further erosion of the ability of state courts to keep elections free and fair is avoided.