(ThePatriotWire)- Last March, the U.S. Supreme Court denied North Carolina Republicans’ emergency request to utilize an electoral map they devised that a lower court had disqualified for unconstitutionally favoring Democrats in the November congressional elections.
The North Carolina Republicans suffered a temporary setback, but they will soon have the opportunity to celebrate a more significant legal win. At the time, Republican goal-oriented conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh proposed that the court take up the underlying legal argument, which may allow state legislatures nationwide to implement election laws with less judicial scrutiny.
The Supreme Court declared in June that the matter would be heard during its upcoming term, which starts on Monday. This demonstrated the 6-3 conservative majority’s growing readiness to tackle contentious issues as it moves the court in the right direction.
The Supreme Court returns from its summer break prepared to take up additional significant issues following a term in which its conservatives issued landmark decisions expanding gun rights and restricting access to abortion. Future court decisions may abolish affirmative action programs instituted by schools and universities to promote racial diversity on campus, cripple the Voting Rights Act, and make it simpler for companies to discriminate against LGBT customers on free speech.
The court’s current conservative supermajority was added by three justices named by former Republican President Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020.
Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, asserts that Kavanaugh now significantly impacts the rate and scope of the court’s rightward tilt. Kavanaugh was dubbed the “middle justice” by Gornstein.
Although Chief Justice John Roberts, an incrementalist conservative, and the liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson are to Kavanaugh’s left, he does not appear to be as far to the right as Justices Clarence Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett.
During a recent panel discussion in Washington, Gornstein pointed out that Kavanaugh has started expressing his views on the boundaries of the majority’s decisions. For example, he published a separate ruling indicating that interstate travel to receive the operation is constitutional in the abortion case.
This is Justice Kavanaugh’s court for the time being and the foreseeable future, Gornstein added.
Fourteen of the court’s 15 decisions in its most recent term were decided on a 6-3 vote, an increase from the previous term’s 10 cases. The expansion of gun rights, lawsuits supporting religious freedom, and climate change were all decided on that same margin.
If successful, this theory would limit the ability of state courts to review decisions made by state legislatures regarding federal elections.
