An assertive Supreme Court turns to curbing state courts
When the Supreme Court issued an emergency order this week that protected the congressional district of a New York Republican, it intervened in a voting rights dispute, pre-empting the state’s highest court before it had a chance to act.
Since President Trump returned to the White House, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown a willingness to short-circuit lower-court proceedings with a slew of emergency rulings in federal cases. But this was a rare instance in which the justices leapfrogged the state courts, too — a sign, legal experts said, that despite intense scrutiny of how the Supreme Court has been using its emergency docket, the conservative justices appear to be expanding its use rather than constraining it.
Unlike the court’s traditional “merits” cases, which arrive after months or years of lower-court consideration, emergency requests are fast-tracked with limited briefing and almost always without oral argument. The emergency docket has exploded in recent years, particularly in the second Trump administration, with the filings accounting for a significant part of the justices’ workload. While the quick-turn orders are technically place holders, they can effectively settle significant issues while litigation plays out in the lower courts.
The order in the New York case was unsigned and included no reasoning, as is typical. The three liberal justices joined in a 13-page dissent to assert that the majority had interfered with New York court proceedings in an inappropriate and unorthodox manner that could have far-reaching consequences for expanding the justices’ power.
The majority was grabbing “newfound authority,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, warning that the action could put the Supreme Court at the center of deciding every election-law dispute, even as states seek to redraw voting maps before midterm elections in November. The move also usurped state power, she observed, a violation of principles of federalism that conservatives promote in other instances.
“If this court’s grasping reach extends even to a nonfinal decision of a state trial court,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “then every decision from any court is now fair game.” [Continue reading…]