Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Supreme Court has chance to deny Republicans’ attempted electoral power grab

supreme court

Patrick Semansky / AP, file

Light illuminates part of the Supreme Court building at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 16, 2022.

While many of the country’s political news pundits were focused on former President Donald Trump’s latest calls to “throw out the Constitution,” far less attention has been paid to the efforts of North Carolina elected officials to join Trump in attacking the state and federal Constitution in pursuit of personal power.

In a case before the U.S. Supreme Court today, North Carolina’s Republican state legislature is actively arguing that when it comes to the authority to draw legislative election maps, state constitutions — as in all state constitutions, including Nevada’s — are irrelevant and should be ignored in favor of the whims of elected legislators.

Making an equally corrosive and unnecessarily complicated counterargument is the North Carolina state Supreme Court. It argues that language in the U.S. Constitution that specifically gives certain election-related powers to the legislature should be ignored for the whims of elected state judges.

The case is legally and procedurally complicated, but essentially boils down to two questions:

• Who has the authority to draw legislative maps?

• Who, if anyone, has the authority to review those maps for violations of legal and civil rights?

The North Carolina Legislature argues that under Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, legislative mapmaking is the exclusive right of state legislatures. Therefore, they argue, the maps they draw are not subject to the rules or limitations of the state constitution or state civil rights laws. As such, they are not subject to judicial review by the state Supreme Court. By the North Carolina Legislature’s logic, even a state constitutional amendment couldn’t prevent legislators from gerrymandering districts that discriminate against groups of people who aren’t already covered by federal civil rights acts or the U.S. Constitution, including LGBTQ+ people.

The North Carolina Supreme Court argues that such a position would ignore the will and rights of the voters as expressed in state constitutions and state civil rights laws. As such, they claim that not only do state supreme courts have a right to review legislative maps for violations of a state constitution, but they also have the right to ensure voter rights are upheld by appointing independent third parties to draw new maps when they find legislative maps unconstitutional.

In other words, North Carolina Republicans aren’t even pretending to care about the rule of law or the will or rights of the voters. They’re just looking for power by any means necessary.

While it’s tempting to mock North Carolina officials’ almost comically transparent power grabs, state judges, lawmakers and political operatives across the country are closely watching the case — some with great anticipation and others with dread.The outcome is likely to affect every state where the power to draw legislative maps is held by the state legislature itself. This includes Nevada.

Ultimately, the case could decide the makeup of dozens of state legislative chambers, the U.S. House of Representatives and even the presidency.

Nathan Hecht, the Republican chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, described the case as “the biggest federalism issue in a long time, maybe ever.”

While we agree that the rights and will of the voters as expressed in the state constitution should matter, and thus agree with the North Carolina Supreme Court’s first claim, we also believe that the federal Constitution is clear in delegating map-making authority to the legislatures, and thus disagree with the state supreme court’s second claim.

Fortunately, there is a simple and straightforward middle ground that respects both the federal and state constitutions while maintaining checks and balances and a separation of powers between the branches of government.

The U.S. Supreme Court could rule that the U.S. Constitution specifically gives state legislatures the authority to define district boundaries and thus only a state legislature can delegate that authority, while also ruling that the U.S. Constitution’s delegation of authority does not remove legislative maps from state constitutional judicial review.

This solution would preserve some protection of civil rights while ensuring that authority vested in the state legislatures remains there and is not co-opted by state judges who are often subject to partisan elections.

It would also help ensure that federal legislative districts — which also affect presidential Electoral College districts — are not gerrymandered so badly as to violate the rights and will of the voters, as is currently the case in states like Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Nevadans and Americans of all political stripes should also take note: The GOP assaults on the will and rights of the people have not stopped simply because Trump is out of office and the “red wave” failed to materialize in last month’s midterm elections. They will only stop when extremists are no longer in power within the party and the people make clear that the legal and civil rights of all Americans matter, even those with whom we disagree.

Reasonable people must continue to speak with one voice, rejecting violence, extremism and disenfranchisement in all its forms and from all corners of the political spectrum.