US law: the North Carolina electoral boundaries theory case

Self-tutoring about US law: the tutor discusses a recent Supreme Court decision.

Every time I open a new browser tab, I’m flooded with news, sometimes including court decisions. I’m no lawyer, but I try to understand the basics of legal cases brought to my attention. I especially like cases that focus on legal theory. Moreover, US Supreme Court decisions are always interesting. Therefore, when I saw this article, I had to read it.

What follows is my understanding of the article and of the situation, which it took me a few reads to grasp:

Gerrymandering is, of course, redrawing electoral boundaries with the motive of strengthening one party’s result in the next election. I’ve always wondered to what extent it really works, but I guess it could be important, given the thin margin by which US elections are sometimes won. It’s definitely a motivating topic, anyhow, and seems to make the news a lot, including with this story.

I guess how it began is that North Carolina legislators, currently dominated by one party, decided they would redraw NC’s electoral map to further advantage their party. Once again: why a dominant party would do this, and what benefit it can really achieve, are question marks for me. The issue was brought to the state court, however, which disallowed the redrawn map on the basis that it was obvious gerrymandering and in violation of the state constitution.

What happened next? Two of the legislators from NC didn’t want to accept the state court’s decision, so they took it to the Supreme Court.

The legislators’ argument – they were in favour of redrawing the NC electoral map, I perceive – seems to be the independent state legislature theory.

The next turn of events was that the NC state court had a staffing change: Suddenly it approved the legislators’ desire to redraw the NC electoral map.

The Supreme Court, however, decided to rule on the case anyway. They agreed with the NC state court’s original ruling – that redrawing the electoral boundaries as the legislators proposed wouldn’t be consistent with the law.

Ironically, with the issue already decided in NC state court, the Supreme Court’s decision does not mandate any response; it’s just theoretical at this point. Justice Thomas Clarence pointed out that it’s not the Supreme Court’s job to make advisory rulings. If I understand his meaning, the legislators who brought the case to the Supreme Court would have dropped it when their own state took their side. Therefore, at that point, the Supreme Court should have dropped it as well.

From my point of view, it’s not the only theoretical situation I’ve heard the US Supreme Court involved in this year.

Source:

brennancenter.org