“The Nightmare Scenario SCOTUS is Plotting For the 2024 Election Takeover” – Fear Mongering Over Upcoming Moore v. Harper Case
Legal Insurrection by William A. Jacobson Sunday, July 3, 2022
Lefty Radio Host Thom Hartmann: “Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just announced — a story that has largely flown under the nation’s political radar — that they’ll consider pre-rigging the presidential election of 2024.”
Here we go again. The End of Democracy. You know, like when the Supreme Court ruled that abortion rights should be determined through the state electoral process, not by federal courts. And when it declared that the EPA could exercise powers over major issues only if the duly-elected Congress clearly enabled such action in legislation. Such a threat!
Here we go again. The politicians and media that brought you those End of Democracy narratives, and the Russia Collusion hoax, have a new demon to spend the next several months foaming about: Moore v. Harper, which the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear next term.
Sounds sooooooo scary. Ian Millheiser at Vox writes, A new Supreme Court case is the biggest threat to US democracy since January 6
The Supreme Court’s announcement on Thursday that it will hear Moore v. Harper, a case that could concentrate an unprecedented amount of power in gerrymandered state legislatures, should alarm anyone who cares about democracy.
The case is perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the January 6 attack.
An Op-ed in WaPo is equally dramatic, A new Supreme Court case threatens another body blow to our democracy
So what’s all this fear mongering about? Here’s how the Emergency Application for a Stay, filed by Republicans in February 2022, framed it:
The federal constitution expressly provides that the manner of federal elections shall “be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” U.S. CONST. art. I, § 4. Yet barring this Court’s immediate intervention, elections during the 2022 election cycle for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina will be conducted in a manner prescribed not by the State’s General Assembly but rather by its courts. “The Constitution provides that state legislatures”—not “state judges”—“bear primary responsibility for setting election rules,” Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Wisconsin State Legislature, 141 S. Ct. 28, 29 (2020) (Gorsuch, J., concurring in denial of application to vacate stay), and this Court should intervene to protect the Constitution’s allocation of power over this matter of fundamental importance to our democratic system of government.
In an order entered on February 4, the North Carolina Supreme Court invalidated the North Carolina General Assembly’s congressional maps and remanded to state trial court for remedial proceedings. Rather than seek immediate review in this Court, Applicants engaged in a good-faith effort to craft a congressional map that would be valid under the state Supreme Court’s order. Yet in an order entered on February 23, the North Carolina trial court rejected that map and instead mandated the use of a new map that had been created by a group of Special Masters and their team of assistants—who, to make matters worse, designed their own, judicially-crafted map after engaging in ex parte communications with experts for the plaintiffs. Applicants immediately sought a stay from the North Carolina Supreme Court, but that stay was promptly denied.
If a redistricting process more violative of the U.S. Constitution exists, it is hard to imagine it. Without this Court’s emergency intervention, the North Carolina courts’ unconstitutional, judicially created congressional maps will be used to conduct the May 17, 2022 primary election….
In March 2002, the Court denied an emergency stay over the dissent of three Justices:
Application (21A455) denied by the Court. Justice Kavanaugh concurring in the denial of the application for stay. (Detached opinion). Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch join, dissenting from the denial of the application for stay. (Detached opinion).
Justice Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, would have granted a stay. Justice Alito’s opinion explained the importance of the issue, and citing to numerous cases arising out of the 2020 election in which the Court declined to resolve it:
I would grant the application for a stay.
This case presents an exceptionally important and recurring question of constitutional law, namely, the extent of a state court’s authority to reject rules adopted by a state legislature for use in conducting federal elections. There can be no doubt that this question is of great national importance. But we have not yet found an opportune occasion to address the issue. See, e.g., Democratic National Committee v. Wisconsin State Legislature, 592 U. S. ___ (2020); Scarnati v. Boockvar, 592 U. S. ___ (2020); Moore v. Circosta, 592 U. S. ___ (2020); Wise v. Circosta, 592 U. S. ___ (2020); Bush v. Gore, 531 U. S. 98, 112 (2000) (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring); see also Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Degraffenreid, 592 U. S. ___ (2021) (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); id., at ___ (ALITO, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Wisconsin State Legislature, 592 U. S., at ___ (GORSUCH, J., concurring). We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better. This case presented a good opportunity to consider the issue, but unfortunately the Court has again found the occasion inopportune.
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/07/the-nightmare-scenario-scotus-is-plotting-for-the-2024-election-takeover-fear-mongering-over-upcoming-moore-v-harper-case/