The Roberts Court Draws a Line
There are limits to the conservative theories that a majority of the justices are willing to endorse.
In rejecting the independent state legislature theory, a thoroughly right-wing Supreme Court sent the message that it will not simply accept whatever ludicrous partisan legal theory its comrades in the conservative legal movement come up with. At least, not every single time.
The theory, as advanced seeking to ignore a state-supreme-court ruling that their partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution, argued that only state legislatures could set federal election rules, and thus other state actors, like state courts and governors, had no power to intervene. This would allow state legislatures near-unchecked power to disenfranchise their federal election results—helps illustrate the .
