Namesake of Moore v. Harper election case urges Supreme Court to take bold action
Kaelan Deese Katherine Doyle
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North Carolina Republican state House Speaker Tim Moore, the plaintiff and namesake of the closely watched Moore v. Harper U.S. Supreme Court case, hopes the highest court doesn’t punt on a lawsuit that could have major implications for elections on a national level.
On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court’s newly formed 5-2 Republican majority considered whether to overrule a decision that struck down the state’s Republican-drawn voting maps as a partisan gerrymander, meaning they would reconsider a case the highest court already heard in December. The rehearing marked only the third time the state court has granted a rehearing in the past 30 years.
NORTH CAROLINA SUPREME COURT REHEARS REDISTRICTING CASE VITAL TO MOORE V. HARPER
The rehearing was held to debate the merits of the previous 4-3 Democratic-appointed majority’s decision against the GOP maps, which effectively put in place new maps drawn by neutral parties for the 2022 election.
The U.S. Supreme Court is still weighing the Moore case and asked parties involved on March 2 what effects the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision to rehear the lower court case, Harper v. Hall, might have on the Moore decision. Some legal experts have hypothesized if the lower court rules on Hall ahead of the Moore decision, it could moot the U.S. Supreme Court’s final opinion on the matter.
“I would hope that the state Supreme Court would wait because I do think there is a significant precedential value at the federal level with this case, having made it that far before SCOTUS,” Moore told the Washington Examiner in a Friday interview, suggesting the North Carolina Supreme Court should let the U.S. Supreme Court decide the case before the state court issues its opinion.
North Carolina Republicans are ultimately seeking to reinstate the General Assembly-drawn voting maps that likely would secure 10 GOP victories out of the state’s 14 congressional districts.
An attorney for the GOP lawmakers, Phillip Scratch, argued Tuesday that the state courts have no working tools to adjudicate partisan gerrymanders and that map-drawing should be left to the state lawmakers.
Conservative outside groups that support the state GOP’s petition have also warned an unfavorable ruling would “leave the door wide open to the Left’s anti-democracy campaign, which has saturated the courts with politicized lawsuits and introduced chaos to our elections,” Jason Snead of the Honest Elections Project previously told the Washington Examiner.
Some Republican state lawmakers have also pushed the high court to embrace a legal doctrine known as the independent state legislature theory, which contends that the federal Constitution prohibits state courts and constitutions from limiting legislatures’ power to regulate federal elections.
However, Moore said, “I don’t buy into that theory.”
Backers of the doctrine, often promoted by conservatives, base it on a strict interpretation of the Constitution’s elections clause, which says, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
Moore and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger argue in their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that “the Elections Clause does not give the state courts, or any other organ of state government, the power to second-guess the legislature’s determinations.”
Moore added his belief that the previous Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court “overstepped their bounds and just created new law out of whole cloth on redistricting.”
With the 5-2 majority now on the North Carolina bench, Moore said it’s his “hope” that the justices will “rectify this and reverse those hearings.”
Although the state Supreme Court technically only reheard the second decision in the case, which is known as “Harper II” and surrounds the maps that were used to replace the invalidated ones, the GOP lawmakers want to see the court also overrule its earlier decision, referred to as “Harper I,” that originally struck down the legislature’s maps last February.
An attorney for the Elias Law Group, which challenged North Carolina’s GOP-drawn maps, told the Washington Examiner the previous maps “dilute” some constituents’ votes and that the replacement maps require “that all voters have substantially equal voting power.”
“Now, Legislative Defendants play a cynical game, hoping that this newly constituted court will reverse course and abdicate its fundamental duty of judicial review,” ELG counsel Lali Madduri said.
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When asked whether he believes the state Supreme Court would overturn the previous decision, Moore said, “I believe they will just based on their precedent.”
“And the thing in North Carolina was that what happened in that litigation was just such an aberration from anything that has ever happened before,” Moore said, adding that the previous liberal-led court “literally made up a new law.”