Eye On Illinois: North Carolina opinion eventually will echo here, if only faintly

With the caveat that I’m neither a judge nor a lawyer, Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a North Carolina redistricting case could eventually echo in Illinois.

Prairie Staters are no strangers to litigation over political maps, the most recent case ending in December 2021 when a panel of federal judges essentially said they couldn’t overturn Democrats’ new maps on grounds of racial discrimination – allegedly suppressing the chances of Black and Latino candidates – because the party was so brazen in attempts to boost its own 2022 chances, and that type of gerrymandering remains legal.

“Although there is debate about how to achieve the guarantees of the Voting Rights Act,” the panel wrote, “one thing is clear: A federal court is not the arbiter of that dispute unless plaintiffs carry their burden to prove that an elected legislature’s approach violates the law.”

The federal judges not only declined to undo Illinois law, they also acknowledged the narrow 2016 Illinois Supreme Court ruling that removed from the statewide ballot a constitutional amendment question on election reform, placed on the strength of more than 500,000 petition signatures.

“These are matters for the people of Illinois to continue debating,” the judges wrote. “Levers other than federal courts are available to them, whether they are state statutes, state constitutions, and even entreaties to Congress, if they wish to change the current process.”

“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause. But federal courts must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review.”

—  U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts, in Tuesday’s 6-3 opinion regarding North Carolina, wrote that “state courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause. But federal courts must not abandon their own duty to exercise judicial review.”

The Associated Press, citing the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said the North Carolina case put at stake more than 170 state constitutional provisions and more than 650 different state laws that delegate authority on election policy to state and local officials, including thousands of rules covering issues as narrow as polling place locations.

That reality highlights the macro issue: it’s almost certain Congress would never establish nationwide, uniform protocol for every elected office. As such, local and state election officials who have to administer many more ballots than just the Congressional and presidential tickets focus on basic logistics and policies whether the issue is the White House or a community college board vacancy.

So while it’s certainly interesting and important to parse things like Tuesday’s opinion, and encouraging to see both liberal and conservative justices refuse to erase state courts’ power to stop lawmakers from violating their own state constitutions, the reality is we’re going to be dealing with this and similar election-related issues in perpetuity.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.