Moore v. Harper SCOTUS ruling didn’t end North Carolina Republicans’ assault on voting rights

03 July 2023

Countless Democrats — as well as non-MAGA conservatives — breathed a major sigh of relief when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 Moore v. Harper ruling on Tuesday, June 27.

At issue in the case was a far-right legal doctrine known as the independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which, in its most extreme form, claims that state legislatures alone should decide the rules in federal elections. The ISL, at its most severe, totally excludes governors, state supreme courts and judges from having any say in the matter.

But the ISL was a bridge too far even for Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democrat-appointed justices (Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan) in the ruling. The three dissenters were Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Roberts tore the ISL to pieces, much to the dismay of the far-right MAGA Republicans who promoted it in Moore v. Harper. Legal scholars, both left and right, have been applauding the chief justice for killing a fringe theory they view as extreme, dangerous and anti-democracy.

But journalist Jordan Wilkie, in an article published by The Guardian on July 3, warns that voting rights are still under attack in North Carolina despite the High Court's ruling.

"North Carolina Republicans — including Tim Moore, the speaker of the state's House of Representatives whose name is on the case, Moore v Harper — had asked the (U.S.) Supreme Court to take up a highly controversial legal theory that would have given him and legislators around the country immense power over setting state-level federal election laws," Wilkie explains. "Even though the High Court rejected that theory in a 6-3 vote, preventing a nationwide shift in checks and balances over writing election laws, North Carolina's Republican legislators can already act largely unchecked by the other branches of state government."

The reporter continues, "They have a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature, and the now-Republican-controlled state supreme court signaled it would not act as a check on legislative power, including by taking the rare step to reverse two recent decisions by the previously Democrat-controlled court to re-allow partisan gerrymandering and require voter ID."

Although Speaker Moore disagreed with the Supreme Court's rejection of the ISL, he announced that North Carolina Republicans "will continue to move forward with the redistricting process later this year." The Moore v. Harper ruling shot down the ISL, but it didn't eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

In report published on July 2, the New York Times' Nick Corasaniti emphasizes that gerrymandering by North Carolina Republicans could hurt Democratic efforts to win the state in the 2024 presidential election. President Joe Biden lost North Carolina to former President Donald Trump by only 1 percent in 2020, and Democratic strategists believe the state is in play for Biden next year.

The Brennan Center for Justice's Wendy Weiser told the Times, "It is a battleground state and a state that has a history of discrimination in voting. It is definitely one of the most critical states to be worried about."

Corasaniti points out that North Carolina "has a particularly tortured past on voting rights."

"Under the Voting Rights Act," Corasaniti observes, "parts of the state were forced to obtain federal clearance to change voting laws because of their history of racially discriminatory election rules. More recently, in 2016, a federal court struck down a Republican-led voter identification law, saying it had targeted 'African Americans with almost surgical precision.'"

Find The Guardian's full report at this link and The New York Times' article here (subscription required).

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