North Carolina gerrrymandering

Lou Bricano

2023-04-30 18:33:02 UTC

https://www.theblaze.com/news/north-carolina-supreme-court-gerr
ymandering-ruling
[...]
The North Carolina Supreme Court issued a significant ruling
on Friday that could have massive implications in the 2024
elections.
In a 5-2 decision, the court ruled the state Constitution does
not grant state courts the authority to issue decisions on the
issue of partisan gerrymandering because it expressly
enumerates redistricting authority to state lawmakers.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Our constitution expressly assigns the redistricting
authority to the General Assembly subject to explicit
limitations in the text. Those limitations do not address
partisan gerrymandering. It is not within the authority of
this Court to amend the constitution to create such
limitations on a responsibility that is textually assigned to
another branch. Furthermore, were this Court to create such a
limitation, there is no judicially discoverable or manageable
standard for adjudicating such claims.
The ruling reverses a decision the state Supreme Court made
one year ago when it overturned redistricting maps drawn by
Republicans on grounds that they were unconstitutional and
"unlawful partisan gerrymanders."
[...]
The left will no doubt declare the North Carolina court to be
corrupt

Because it objectively is.

Oh? Because they are conservative?

They aren't conservative.Ā They are extremist right-wingnuts.
They aren't corrupt because they're conservative; that's getting
it backward. They're extremist right-wingnuts because they're
corrupt.

I don't know the judges in the North Carolina court,

Of course you don't.Ā You don't know anything meaningful, and
you're always admitting it.

but I seriously doubt that they are extremists.

You are wrong, of course.

What evidence do you have to support your claim?

The fact that they reversed the prior decision when no facts had
changed and there was no action before the court.

Have you considered that the prior decision may have been wrong?

It was wrong and the decision explained exactly why.

It wasn't wrong and the court decision made no explanation of why it
was overturned.

The courts have no authority to rule on this matter.

Nonsense. State courts can rule on the constitutionality of acts of
state legislatures under their state constitutions. Legislatures have
to comply with their state constitutions. This is elementary.

This just stuff that every high school
civics student already knows, it seems "Nobody"
dropped out before then.
"A state court is a court that has general
jurisdiction within the specific state’s
territory. State courts are the final
arbiters of the state’s constitution and
statutes."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/state_court

Kremlin Girl / Bit of Nothingness, the ignorant twat, is expressing support for
the wholly discredited and debunked "independent state legislature" theory,
which holds that under the Constitution's elections clause, the elected state
legislature holds sole and *unreviewable* power to set the rules in their states
for holding federal elections. The theory is complete nonsense. It is at
complete odds not only with the language of the Constitution, but also with the
founders' understanding of what state legislatures are. The Supreme Court has
previously held multiple times that the ISL theory is bunk, but given what
happens when Republiscums/QAnon control a court, there is no guarantee the
current SCOTUS wouldn't simply chuck out their older holdings. In Smiley v.
Holm, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
and Rucho v. Common Cause, the SCOTUS held that legislative redistricting power
is *not* beyond any and all review by other state government actors.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/moore-v-harper-independent-legislature-theory-supreme-court/671625/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/independent-state-legislature-theory-moore-harper/673690/
Kremlin Girl / Bit of Nothingness is, as always, wrong. State courts *have* the
power to review state legislatures' redistricting plans under their state
constitutions, and to invalidate them if they violate those constitutions.

The author of both these Atlantic pieces is J. Michael Luttig, a former judge of
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and a giant among conservative
legal scholars. (Luttig stated unequivocally and forcefully that Pence had no
constitutional power whatsoever to reject any electoral votes.)

Luttig says this about the nonsensical garbage "ISL" in the first piece:

That as many as six justices on the Supreme Court have flirted with the
independent-state-legislature theory over the past 20 years is baffling.
There is literally no support in the Constitution, the pre-ratification
debates, or the history from the time of our nation’s founding or the
Constitution’s framing for a theory of an independent state legislature that
would foreclose state judicial review of state legislatures’ redistricting
decisions. Indeed, there is overwhelming evidence that the Constitution
contemplates and provides for such judicial review.

To the extent that advocates of the independent-state-legislature theory have
any evidence at all to support the theory, it is exceedingly thin. Their
textual argument is that the total disempowerment of state courts necessarily
follows from the fact that the elections clause empowers the state
legislatures to prescribe the “manner” of holding congressional elections.

But there is neither more nor less significance to the fact that the
Constitution assigns this quintessential legislative power to the state
legislatures than that the Constitution assigns federal lawmaking to
Congress, rather than to the executive or the judiciary. And yet, the
Constitution provides for judicial review of the actions of both.

Proponents of the independent-state-legislature theory argue that, because
the elections clause does not assign this legislative role to the state
governors and courts, the burden is on those who argue against the theory to
come forward with compelling evidence that the Framers intended state courts
to review state-legislative election laws. But that’s to reverse the burden
of proof. Because there is no evident support at all for the theory, the
burden instead is on those who argue for the theory to come forward with
compelling evidence from the text, structure, or design of the Constitution,
or from the history at the time of the framing or founding, that confirms
that the Constitution conferred on the state legislatures judicially
unreviewable authority to redraw congressional districts. The proponents of
the theory have not carried this heavy burden to date, and they cannot
possibly carry this burden in Moore v. Harper.

Not only does the Framers’ assignment of the power to prescribe the manner
for holding congressional elections to the state legislatures not prove the
theory and end the inquiry, as its proponents contend, that assignment is
actually the beginning of the proof that the Constitution does not foreclose
state judicial review of those decisions. For, where the proponents identify
literally no evidence at all that the Framers intended to foreclose state
judicial review, there is actually overwhelming evidence in the text and
structure of the Constitution, and in the pre- and post-ratification history,
that the Framers understood and assumed that there would be judicial review
of the legislatures’ redistricting decisions. This is as would be expected,
given the Framers’ obvious acceptance and accommodation of the sacred
judicial role in the states’ governments—which not incidentally enjoyed the
same sanctity in the new national government—as well as their deep suspicions
of the natural partisan tendencies of the state legislatures.
[...]
Because the Constitution preserved the states’ reserved powers and
accommodated their state governments of separated powers through which those
reserved powers are exercised, it would have been a constitutionally radical
idea for the Framers to have considered foreclosing state judicial review of
the state legislatures’ redistricting decisions. There is every reason to
believe that the states would not have agreed to a constitution that denied
their highest courts that judicial review. But in all events, such an idea
would not have been blithely and, at very best, silently implied in the
Constitution’s text and nowhere else even mentioned. Had the Framers intended
to foreclose state judicial review and done so, there would be substantial
historical evidence from the time of the framing that they intended such, and
unmistakable language in the Constitution that they did so. There is neither.

Kremlin Girl / Bit of Nothingness is wrong — not just wrong, but completely full
of shit, as usual. State courts have the power to review state legislatures'
redistricting plans. Nothing could be clearer.