The United States Supreme Court convened its annual session in Washington on Oct. 3 with a crowded docket that includes cases related to affirmative action, gay rights, and freedom of speech and religion.
Among the most closely-watched cases slated for the term, which could see hearings extend into next summer, is a challenge to the North Carolina Supreme Court’s 2021 rejection of the legislature’s revised post-2020 Census maps for the state’s 14 congressional districts.
In placing Moore v. Harper on its docket, the nation’s highest court has agreed to resolve a decades’-long debate over the “independent state legislature theory,” which maintains the U.S. Constitution vests elections regulation entirely with state lawmakers to the exclusion of other elected officials, appointed bureaucrats, and the courts as long as their actions comply with state and federal laws….