News Clips

The case, Moore v. Harper, arose out of a lawsuit in state court where Democratic Party-backed groups, such as the National Redistricting Foundation, and pro-democracy groups, such as Common Cause, sued the legislature claiming their redistricted maps for state and federal offices were gerrymandered. The groups argued that the state’s constitution prevented extreme partisan gerrymandering. 

Julia Vaughn, the executive director of Common Cause Indiana, said people seeking to expand election access in Indiana find themselves constantly on the defensive. “Very rarely do we get the opportunity to talk about proactive, pro-voting rights or legislative changes. We are often trying to prevent bad things from happening,” Vaughn said. “We’re like that little boy who sticks his finger in the hole on the side of a dike to stop it from flooding, but we often times don’t have enough fingers.”

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs, which include the N.C. League of Conservation Voters and Common Cause, won in February a landmark state Supreme Court ruling. The legislative seat boundaries also keep discriminating against Black voters, said Hillary Klein, a lawyer representing Common Cause. Klein and another attorney said legislative maps remained skewed toward Republicans and fail to give Democrats the same chance as the GOP to win governing majorities should they receive similar statewide voter support as Republicans -- a standard the state Supreme Court in February.

The courts should be above partisan politics, said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a good government group. Voters shouldn’t assume that a Republican majority will mean that big business will always win or that a Democratic majority will favor labor unions. “At the end of the day we want these courts to be independent and impartial and not be caught up in partisan elections,” she said. “And now we have the party labels, so that makes it different.” Since Brunner and Kennedy are sitting Supreme Court justices, people can make comparisons based on how they ruled in cases, Turcer said. “There are things that people can compare and contrast,” Turcer said. “It’s incredibly important for all of us to pay attention to the Ohio Supreme court because of voting rights, redistricting and mapmaking and because of the rights for women to make choices.”

Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, representing Common Cause in the case, told the court the opponents’ arguments “hang on a hyper-literal reading of the word ‘Legislature’ that ignores that word’s context, constitutional structure, and precedent,” adding, “the original understanding of ‘Legislature’ … contemplated a governing body defined and bounded by state constitutional limits.” It’s hard to have much confidence that such originalist arguments will persuade the court’s self-described originalists.

“We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. Skip to appointment of special master who is familiar with New York immediately and stop wasting New Yorkers time and money with a useless bipartisan commission that defaults to the Legislature,” Susan Lerner, executive director of the good government group Common Cause New York, said in a statement.