In a 6-3 decision in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the independent state legislature theory, a radical theory that could have undermined voting rights and upended our elections.
The ruling means that state courts can still freely enforce state constitutional rights and guarantees, as they have for hundreds of years. The case threatened to make state legislatures “independent” of the usual checks against abuse when they regulate federal elections. But common sense prevailed, and our system of checks and balances still stands. As Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the majority opinion, “The Elections Clause does not insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.” In other words, the independent state legislature theory is dead.
To be sure, the Supreme Court still claimed the power for federal courts to review state court decisions concerning federal elections in extreme circumstances. The court did not articulate a standard to apply in those cases, but it made clear that federal court action would be limited to the rare case where state courts “exceeded the bounds of ordinary judicial review.” And it made clear that state legislatures are not free to go rogue.
