Reading the Supreme Court tea leaves
December 9, 2022 at 10:48 a.m.
As oral arguments wrapped up in Wednesday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on the North Carolina redistricting case, legal experts and court watchers tried to read the tea leaves of the justices’ comments to speculate how the court might ultimately rule.
The consensus seems to be that Republican justices were too skeptical of legislative leaders’ arguments to opt for a sweeping ruling in their favor (read the details of the hearing below in the Top 10.
Some think the justices may be leaning toward a narrowly tailored ruling that could overturn the N.C. Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling without significantly expanding the power of state legislatures.
Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr said on Twitter that he predicts a “narrowly written” opinion in favor of the plaintiffs.
Here are some key quotes from the Republican justices that might offer some hints, according to the 208-page transcript:
Justice Neil Gorsuch: “It seems to me there are two types of problems. One is, is a state court actually interpreting a statute or is it going too far afield, to the point where someone might say it's not following the statute? And then you have a separate problem of when a state court does not even try to interpret the law and just annuls the law outright, and that's this case.”
Justice Samuel Alito: “Even under (legislative attorneys’) primary theory, however, isn't it inevitable that the state courts are going to have to interpret those provisions and isn't it inevitable that state election officials in the Executive Branch are going to have to make decisions about all sorts of little things that come up concerning the conduct of elections?
Chief Justice John Roberts: “You (legislative attorneys) suggest that there's a ‘narrower, alternative ground’ to decide the case in your favor which would allow some substantive state restrictions to be enforced. Could you articulate exactly what you think that is?”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “Your position seems to go further than Chief Justice Rehnquist's decision in Bush v. Gore, where he seemed to acknowledge that state courts would have a role interpreting state law and that federal court review of that should be, in his words, deferential and simply should be a check to make sure that the state court had not significantly departed from state law. And he drew on a body of precedent that has existed previously.”
Kavanaugh: “What about the historical practice over time, which has certainly developed in a way that state constitutions do regulate federal elections? What weight, if any, do we place on that?”