During the past 100 years, following a quiet 140 years, activist judges have attempted, often successfully, to rewrite the constitution. Moore v. Harper may ultimately prove to be a “firewall” against Judicial Activism.
Included in the pleadings, Plaintiff posed the question, “Do the state courts have the authority to consider any claim relating to an action taken by a state legislature? “
This is the argument made by North Carolina House Speaker, Timothy Moore. In his opinion, the North Carolina Supreme Court does not have the authority to review the actions of state legislatures when they relate to federal elections. Yet this is exactly what it did in February of this year.
This is the basis for the North Carolina question that was heard by the United States Supreme Court on Dec. 7. Moore v. Harper addresses the constitutional right of state legislatures to determine the “time, place and manner of federal elections.”
Does Article One Prohibit the Action Proposed in Moore v. Harper?
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) makes it clear that Article One of the United States Constitution “expressly provides that rules for federal congressional elections are established in each state by the individual state legislatures.” They contend that the North Carolina Supreme Court “disregarded that clear command, unconstitutionally implementing its own redistricting process.”
Bartlett Cleland, ALEC Counsel stated “If the North Carolina decision is permitted to stand, state courts will usurp the prerogatives of state legislatures. As stated by the U.S. Supreme Court just two years ago, ‘The Constitution provides that state legislatures—not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials—bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.’”
The Albany Law School’s Government Law School weighed in: “The issue squarely presented is whether state courts have the authority to consider any claim relating to an action taken by a state legislature that concerns federal elections. The decision might also affect the mechanism for choosing electors from the states to the electoral college. This is possibly the most significant election case ever heard by the Court.”
The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice had its own take:
“Last year, North Carolina’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed, on a party-line vote, an extreme partisan gerrymander to lock in a supermajority of the state’s 14 congressional seats. The gerrymander was so extreme that an evenly divided popular vote would have awarded 10 seats to the Republicans and only four to the Democrats. The map was a radical statistical outlier more favorable to Republicans than 99.9999% of all possible maps.”
The Brennan Center contends that the “Independent State Legislature theory” is on the Supreme Court’s docket. In their view, this theory has been debunked.
“If the Supreme Court adopts the “independent state legislature theory,” it would endanger hundreds of constitutional provisions, ballot initiatives, state court rulings, statutory delegations, and administrative regulations that regulate federal elections.”
There are a lot of voices that don’t share this paradigm.
Moore v. Harper Overturn Could Impact Past Decisions
Veteran pundit Dick Morris noted, “Democrats are terrified of this case and what it could potentially do to the voting landscape. Not to mention how it might impact previous court rulings.”
Morris may have been referencing past SCOTUS rulings including but not limited to Reynolds v. Sims (1964), Baker v. Carr (1962), and Westberry v. Sanders (1964). All dealt with the “one person, one vote” standard, which Earl Warren asserted was protected by the 14th amendment.
Almost certain to surface would be the question of individual states establishing their own electoral college systems as proposed by unsuccessful Colorado 2022 Senatorial Republican candidate Greg Lopez.
Lopez made the case that rural areas of his state were essentially disenfranchised. His argument was noted in rural states with one or two large metropolitan areas, including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, and Louisiana.
“The framers could have assigned the power over federal elections in the first instance to states, without specifying which entity of state government would have primary responsibility. But recognizing that prescribing the times, places, and manner of federal elections is fundamentally a legislative role, the Framers specified that this delegated power would be exercised by “the Legislature thereof,” stated in the Amicus Brief by Bartlett Cleland in September 2022.
United American States
The question becomes, “are we the United States of America?” Or “are we the “United American States.” At first glance, this appears to be word games. It is not! We have people on the left who care little of state sovereignty. They relish a large central government that controls even how a state would run it elections.
The constitution is very clear on this question. It’s the legislature’s call. But we have an activist, a Democrat judge, and countless others who apparently think that the constitution is an anachronism. They have forgotten the meaning of our motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” From the many, one. That’s why we are the “United States of America,” and not “the United American States.”
Clearly, Republican voices want to see more authority at the state level, including the individual state legislatures. They have a much more literal interpretation of the 10th Amendment.
Democrats are more comfortable with a top-down approach, with more power held at the federal level. They generally don’t trust the states to make their own decisions. They decisively favor appointed court justices and bureaucrats.
Moore’s overturn would be a decisive victory for states’ rights advocates.
[…] For more election information read “Are States Allowed Control of their Elections?“. […]