State vs. State: The Civil War Over Who Controls Your Vote

A war is brewing over who writes the rules of American democracy, with state courts becoming the battlefield and the concept of federalism becoming the weapon of choice.

What to Know 

• The Supreme Court abandoned its role as referee in 2019, unleashing a state-level arms race for political control.
• With the federal guardrail gone, state supreme courts became the last line of defense against hyper-partisan maps.
• Legislatures retaliated with a full-scale assault on the judiciary, using impeachment threats and power-stripping schemes to crush the courts that defied them.
• As states went to war with their own courts, Congress did nothing, leaving every state to fight for itself.
• The result is a chaotic system where the fairness of an election depends on your zip code, a powder keg waiting for the next redistricting cycle to explode.

The central conflict of American federalism has become a brutal fight over who writes the rules of democracy itself. The once-arcane process of drawing electoral maps is now a bare-knuckle brawl for raw political control. This fight was ignited by the Supreme Court. As Alan Greenblatt reported for Governing, the court’s 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision declared partisan gerrymandering a "political question" outside the reach of federal judges. The nation’s highest court effectively abandoned its role as referee, shifting the war to 50 different state-level fronts.

State supreme courts initially stepped into this void. They used their own state constitutions to strike down the most extreme partisan maps passed by legislatures. This judicial check was met with a ferocious backlash. According to a Brennan Center report by Michael Milov-Cordoba, state legislatures launched direct 'assaults on state courts' to neutralize them as a threat. This is a coordinated campaign to seize control of the judiciary through impeachment threats, court-packing schemes, and laws designed to strip judges of their power.

The Great Abdication: Supreme Court Retreats

For decades, those fighting against extreme partisan gerrymandering looked to the federal courts as a potential referee. That hope was extinguished in 2019. In the landmark case Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, declared that partisan gerrymandering claims were "political questions" beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, argued that while extreme gerrymandering is "incompatible with democratic principles," the courts had no manageable constitutional standard to decide when a map crosses the line from acceptable politics into unconstitutional partisanship.

Chief Justice John Roberts

As analyzed by publications like Governing, this was not a minor legal tweak; it was a seismic abdication. The Supreme Court effectively washed its hands of the issue, removing a major federal guardrail that had, for years, loomed as a potential check on state legislatures. The decision was a monumental victory for the "state control" side of the federalism ledger. It sent a clear message: if you want to challenge a partisan gerrymander, do not come knocking on the federal courthouse door. The fight was now a purely state-level affair.

State Courts on the Front Lines

The immediate consequence of the Rucho decision was a dramatic shift in legal strategy. With federal courts out of the picture, voting rights advocates and Democratic-aligned groups turned their attention to the 50 state constitutions and the state supreme courts that interpret them. They found fertile ground. Many state constitutions contain "free and fair elections" clauses or other provisions that lawyers could argue offer more robust protections against gerrymandering than the U.S. Constitution.

This strategy quickly bore fruit. In the redistricting cycle following the 2020 Census, state supreme courts in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio emerged as the new sheriffs in town. They struck down maps passed by Republican-controlled legislatures, ruling that the maps were such extreme partisan gerrymanders that they violated their state constitutions.

For a moment, it seemed a new guardrail had been established. If the federal referee had left the field, the state-level referee was stepping up to call fouls. These state courts, suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, became the most important arbiters of what constitutes a fair map in American politics.

Legislative War on the Judiciary

When state courts rule against legislative actions, legislatures often respond by reassessing judicial authority. Following losses in court over redistricting, legislatures in several states have taken steps that alter the relationship between the two branches. This dynamic is detailed in reports like "Legislative Assaults on State Courts" from the Brennan Center for Justice. The documented legislative actions have a stated goal of rebalancing power. These methods have included:

• Impeachment and Removal: In states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina, legislators have initiated proceedings to impeach state supreme court justices following controversial redistricting decisions. This process is presented as a constitutional check on judicial overreach.
• Jurisdiction Stripping: Lawmakers have introduced bills to remove the authority of state courts to hear cases on specific topics, such as redistricting. This seeks to define the limits of what courts can and cannot rule on.
• Altering Court Composition: In states such as Utah, legislatures have passed laws to change how judges are selected or to alter the size of courts. The stated purpose is to ensure the judiciary reflects the state's values and is accountable to the elected branches.

These actions change the established separation of powers at the state level. Legal disputes that were once settled by judges are now being addressed through a political process involving legislative action.

Washington Failed to Establish a National Standard

While these issues were being decided in the states, a parallel debate over federal election laws took place in Washington, D.C. Democrats and allied groups advocated for legislation, most notably the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

These bills sought to create a uniform set of rules for federal elections nationwide. Key provisions included mandates for automatic voter registration, universal no-excuse absentee voting, and a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering. This represented a push for national standards to take precedence over varying state laws.

These efforts ultimately failed to pass Congress. They faced unified Republican opposition based on the principle that the bills represented federal overreach into a traditional state function. Procedural rules, including the Senate filibuster, were used to block the legislation. In the absence of a new federal law, the authority to set rules for voting and redistricting remains with the individual states.

Wrap Up

These interlocking trends result in a decentralized system for setting election rules. With federal courts deferring to the states and Congress not passing national standards, the legal landscape is defined by varied state-level approaches. The result is a patchwork of 50 different legal frameworks, each established by its own state's political and judicial processes.

This is federalism in practice. The ongoing contests over jurisdiction in state legislatures and courtrooms are not an abstract debate; they are the mechanism by which political authority is allocated and defined in the American system. These state-level outcomes will set the terms for the next redistricting cycle following the 2030 census, where the practical effects of these different rules will be fully applied.