Supreme Court To Hear Case On State Legislature’s Constitutional Election Authority

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in a case related to the powers that state legislatures have over elections, according to report by Politico.

The case, Moore v. Harper, involves North Carolina’s Republican state House speaker, who challenged the state Supreme Court’s decision to toss the state legislature’s congressional maps over allegedly “partisan gerrymandering.”

Back in February, North Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s congressional maps, drawn out by state legislators, violated the state’s constitution by “illegally favoring Republicans.”

In an appeal to the Supreme Court, Republican members of the North Carolina state legislature are arguing that the court had “extremely limited authority to police the legislature on federal election matters.”

The Supreme Court rules 8-1 that GOP lawmakers in North Carolina can intervene in litigation to defend a state voter-ID law. The NAACP is challenging the law, and the NC attorney general (a Democrat) is defending it. GOP legislators want to intervene anyway. SCOTUS says they can.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 23, 2022

The GOP legal argument points to the Electors Clause and the Elections Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which gives state legislatures the authority to handle federal elections, omitting any mention of the judiciary.

“Some provisions of the Constitution are subject to reasonable debate. Others are not,” reads the court brief from the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees. “Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, commonly referred to as the ‘Elections Clause,’ falls into the latter category.”

“Its prescription is incontrovertible; State legislatures have the prerogative to determine ‘[t]he Times, Places and Manner of Holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.’,” the statement continued, citing Articles I and IV, clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

“If a problem arises, ‘the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.’,” they wrote.

“Absent from the constitutionally mandated order of authority is any role for the state judiciary,” the brief continued. “Notwithstanding this omission, certain state and commonwealth courts have taken it upon themselves to appropriate the processes that belong to the politically accountable branches of government.”

SCOTUS will likely hear the case in the fall, around October of this year.

The “independent legislature” constitutional argument in question was also a key basis for several states which attempted to appoint alternate slates of electors in the controversial 2020 presidential election, a move that drew the support of 45th President Donald Trump, who maintains that the election was rigged, corrupt, and ultimately stolen from him.

Trump recently called former Vice President Mike Pence a “human conveyor belt” for fraudulent votes because of his refusal to remedy apparent election irregularities by the dates of December 23 up through January 6 following the November election, Valiant News reported.

“Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of,” Trump said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “But as you heard a year and a half ago, Mike Pence had ‘absolutely no choice’ but to be a human conveyor belt.”

Trump calls Mike Pence "a human conveyor belt" pic.twitter.com/yY5gDtgsnG

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 17, 2022

Some legal experts, such as constitutional lawyer Brian Remy, argued that Pence was duty bound to “exclude and discard the Certificates of Ascertainment and Certificates of Electoral Votes in the States where the fraud occurred” before or during the Joint Session of Congress on January 6 due to evidence of election irregularities in swing states.

“He was a human conveyor belt,” Trump said of Pence. “Even if the votes were fraudulent, they said he had to send the votes, couldn’t do anything. I said, ‘Well, what happens when you had more votes than you had voters.’”

Arizona Gubernatorial frontrunner Kari Lake recently made an appearance on Fox News, where she said “we had a fraudulent election, a corrupt election, and we have an illegitimate president sitting in the White House,” adding that “[Arizona Senate President] Karen Fann even admits there were issues with the election, that it can’t be certified.”