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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block state court-ordered congressional maps in Pennsylvania and North Carolina before the 2022 midterm elections, in two orders late on Monday, handing a win to Democrats.
In a pair of rulings issued late in the day, the court opted to allow redistricting maps drawn up by state courts over the objections of Republican officials and lawmakers to remain in effect in the two states.
Late last month, North Carolina’s highest court invalidated a GOP-drawn map of the state’s 14 congressional districts as unconstitutionally partisan and substituted its own. Separately, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania adopted a proposal favored by the state’s Gov. Tom Wolf (D), who vetoed a map stamped by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
Both state supreme court rulings were appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where petitioners backing the GOP plan argued that the U.S. Constitution empowers state Legislatures to choose the “times, places and manner of holding elections.”
Three members of the high court’s right flank would have granted the application, and two other conservatives would have entertained it had the maneuver not fallen months before an election.
“This case presents an exceptionally important and recurring question of constitutional law, namely, the extent of a state court’s authority to reject rules adopted by a state legislature for use in conducting federal elections,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote, in a dissent joined by the other two justices. “There can be no doubt that this question is of great national importance. But we have not yet found an opportune occasion to address the issue.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, though unwilling to go so far as to block the maps, appeared to agree with their fellow conservatives on the importance of the questions.
“I agree with Justice Alito that the underlying Elections Clause question raised in the emergency application is important, and that both sides have advanced serious arguments on the merits,” they wrote. “The issue is almost certain to keep arising until the Court definitively resolves it. Therefore, if the Court receives petitions for certiorari raising the issue, I believe that the Court should grant certiorari in an appropriate case—either in this case from North Carolina or in a similar case from another State. If the Court does so, the Court can carefully consider and decide the issue next Term after full briefing and oral argument.”
Roberts and Kavanaugh, however, quarreled with the “extraordinary interim relief” requested and the timing that would upend the districts for the upcoming 2022 primary and general elections.
Bob Phillips, executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a group defending the state’s new districts, called Monday’s action a victory.
“We’re pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the legislative defendants’ shameless attempt to impose their gerrymandered congressional map upon North Carolina,” Phillips said.
