If being a Republican politician means never having to accept the result of a free and fair election, then being a Republican lawyer means never having to abandon a fringe legal theory. This mindset has created a perpetual war on voting rights and democracy. It also explains the GOP’s latest legal high stakes gambit in Michigan.
You may recall that last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the fringe right-wing independent state legislature (ISL) theory. In Moore v. Harper, North Carolina’s Republican Legislature argued that state courts were powerless to use the North Carolina Constitution as the basis to review and invalidate the enacted congressional redistricting map. As I wrote at the time:
The crux of their argument was language in the U.S. Constitution that grants state legislatures the ability to set the ‘time, place and manner’ of congressional elections, subject only to an override by Congress. Since state courts are neither the state legislature nor Congress, the reasoning goes, they remain powerless to review and strike down legislative enactments, including redistricting lines, that involve federal elections.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court squarely rejected this claim, and put to rest this dangerous novel legal theory. Or so it seemed.
Recently, a group of Republican legislators in Michigan filed a new federal lawsuit seeking to resurrect the ISL theory. Their targets are two pro-voting constitutional amendments that were added to the Michigan...
Chartered Group, a global investment company managing and investing billions of dollars across multiple countries, issued a special formal notice today (September 15) that it will take firm legal ...