SCOTUS on the Verge of a Decision Precipice

To the Justices of the Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is engaged in deciding the Moore v. Harper case regarding the question so “independent state legislatures” which posits that only a state’s legislature has authority and jurisdiction over election processes which would encompass among other things voting processes and redistricting decisions. This authority would preclude state Supreme Courts or the federal Supreme Court from reviewing or ruling on any action taken by a state legislature. Nothing bad could possibly come from this, as long as, you are willing to allow the legislators of the party you do not support make the rules and even decide that your vote doesn’t matter. Now, this is pretty standard fare for the Supreme Court. One group wants to get something decided in their favor and they bring a case to the Court because unless SCOTUS grants them this right, they don’t have it.

What SCOTUS will decide is unknown as it is a pending decision. However, there are some interesting aspects of a prior SCOTUS ruling on Partisan Gerrymandering where the Court majority ruled that the federal court had no role to play on partisan gerrymandering as it was involved in a variety of political issues. Granted a strange view since SCOTUS is always involved in issues which have political dimensions. The Partisan Gerrymandering cases the 2019 NC - Rucho v. Common Cause case and the MD - Lamone v. Benisek case indicated in the majority opinion that the Court was concerned about being involved in election disputes. That concern/logic doesn’t fit well with the statement that SCOTUS has no role. In fact, the majority opinion presents a clear authority for the Court to review redistricting cases, which is part of the “election processes” that these state legislatures are claiming it does not have. There is also comparable conflict with the Supreme Court deciding that state Supreme Courts don’t have jurisdiction under their constitutions, particularly if SCOTUS has no authority here. It’s an amusing situation of where SCOTUS is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Why is that? Well, if they rule that the legislatures are the sole authority and cannot be reviewed by another branch of government, then their opinion on the partisan gerrymandering cases is compromised and invalidated. Will SCOTUS recognize this? We won’t know until we see what they do. If SCOTUS’s decision is that state and federal courts have review jurisdiction, then they have also reversed their partisan gerrymandering ruling.

This is the problem with making a bad decision in one case and not being able to see that you have created a problem you can’t extract yourself from without admitting that you acted foolishly.