The Supreme Court is set to hear a Republican appeal today that could completely transform the U.S. elections, according to Reuters.
The major case could potentially give politicians more power over voting rules and curb the ability of state courts to scrutinize their actions.
It revolves around the composition of North Carolina’s congressional districts. And has the ability to upend democratic norms completely.
Republican state lawmakers are appealing a decision by North Carolina’s top court to throw out a map delineating the state’s 14 House of Representatives districts.
The new map was approved last year by the Republican-controlled state legislature. The top court in the state ruled that the map was unlawfully biased against Democratic voters.
The Republicans are asking the conservative-stacked Supreme Court to embrace a once-marginal legal theory that has gained favor among some conservatives called the “independent state legislature” doctrine.
Under that obscure doctrine, they claim that the Constitution gives state legislatures — not any other entity such as a court — the exclusive authority over election rules and electoral district maps.
Critics said the theory could upend democratic norms by restricting a crucial check on partisan political power and breed voter confusion with rules that vary between state and federal contests.
North Carolina’s Department of Justice is standing by the actions of the state’s high court, as well as standing alongside the voters and voting rights groups that challenged the Republican-drawn map.
The case has landed at the Supreme Court during a time of sharp divisions over voting rights.
Republican state legislatures have pursued new voting restrictions in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
The new ruling has the potential to endanger thousands of election-related state constitutional provisions, rules adopted by state elections officials, and voter referendum-powered reforms.
Some elections experts have said the doctrine could make gerrymandering easier, which is when a state legislature’s majority party draws congressional district boundaries to entrench its own power.
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