ICYMI: NRF-Supported Respondents Defend Checks and Balances in SCOTUS Brief

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Jena Doyle
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ICYMI: NRF-Supported Respondents Defend Checks and Balances in SCOTUS Brief

Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, the Harper Respondents, a group of North Carolina voters being supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), submitted their merits brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Moore v. Harper. The brief asks the Court to affirm the North Carolina Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the state’s congressional map as a partisan gerrymander. The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case on December 7, 2022.

The brief was submitted jointly by the Harper Respondents, the NC League of Conservation Voters, and Common Cause. As the brief states: “Petitioners’ Elections Clause theory—that state legislatures may wield their power over federal elections to violate the very state constitutions that created them—is inconsistent with constitutional text, structure, history, and precedent.

“This appeal is nothing more than an attempt to nullify state constitutional provisions that protect voters in order to hand near-total control over the regulation of federal elections to politicians in gerrymandered state legislatures,” said Marina Jenkins, Director of Litigation and Policy for the NRF. “The fringe theory being pursued is contradictory to constitutional text, history, and precedent, and flies in the face of basic tenets of federalism. The simple reality is that North Carolina Republicans were stopped in their tracks after they passed an extreme partisan gerrymander that would have given themselves unearned power but that violated multiple state constitutional provisions, so now they are turning to the U.S. Supreme Court to make that check on their behavior just go away. This appeal is one that should be easily resolved by a straightforward application of the law and the Court should refuse to support such an un-democratic theory.” 

The full brief can be found here. 

North Carolina Republicans have appealed the NRF’s February victory before the North Carolina Supreme Court, bringing the case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The appeal seeks to not only reinstate a gerrymandered congressional map, but also to give state legislatures unchecked power within states over federal election laws, including but not limited to congressional redistricting. The argument is based on the extreme, right-wing independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which argues that state courts cannot invalidate laws enacted by state legislatures that pertain to federal elections.

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