CLC to Supreme Court: Uphold Our System of Checks and Balances

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Washington, DC – Paul Smith, senior vice president at Campaign Legal Center (CLC), issued the following statement ahead of Supreme Court oral arguments in Moore v. Harper, which will take place tomorrow morning:

“Checks and balances are a cornerstone of our democracy and prevent any one person, party or legislative body from abusing power. The extreme “independent state legislature” theory would hand state legislators virtually unchecked power to gerrymander congressional districts and to change election rules to undermine the freedom to vote.

State courts are one of the last avenues left for voters to challenge partisan gerrymandering, and we urge the Supreme Court to uphold our system of checks and balances by preserving the vital role state courts and state constitutions play in facilitating a transparent, inclusive and accountable democracy.”

In October, CLC and eight other organizations spanning the political spectrum filed a friend-of-the-court brief encouraging the Supreme Court to preserve the role of state courts and independent redistricting commissions in making congressional district maps more democratic and fair.

More information on CLC’s amicus brief and the dangers of the independent state legislature theory can be found here.

Issues
Redistricting

Harness v. Watson

At a Glance

Campaign Legal Center is urging the Supreme Court to review and put an end to Mississippi’s racially discriminatory disenfranchisement system. It is an extreme outlier and a relic of Jim Crow that continues to serve the purpose for which it was enacted: to prevent Black citizens from voting.

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Voting and Elections
About This Case/Action

This case is about Mississippi’s continuing permanent disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of citizens, including an estimated 15.74% of its Black population, because of a constitutional provision that the Mississippi Supreme Court at the time admitted was drafted to “obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race.”

Petitioners seek to invalidate a central remaining feature of that provision—the list of eight specific disenfranchising crimes that was indisputably adopted in 1890 because those crimes were thought to be committed more frequently by Black Mississippians.

The Fifth Circuit unfortunately upheld the provision based on an erroneous conclusion that two later amendments to the provision—which deleted one crime from the list and added two others but did not give voters the opportunity to accept or reject the 1890 law itself—somehow erased the taint of discrimination.

CLC’s Amicus Brief 

CLC has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief that explains how Mississippi’s disenfranchisement system is an extreme outlier in its felony disenfranchisement and rights restoration restrictions, even amongst the most prohibitive states.

Mississippi is the only state in the nation that continues to impose broad permanent disenfranchisement for even a single felony conviction without providing a systematic pathway to rights restoration. Consequently, Mississippi leads the nation in the percentage of its voting-eligible population that is disenfranchised, and trails only Tennessee in its percentage of disenfranchised Black citizens.

This state of affairs is unlikely to change unless the Supreme Court intervenes to remove this Jim Crow law from the books. There is currently only a single, extremely narrow avenue for amending Mississippi’s constitution and erasing Mississippi’s Jim Crow past: a legislatively referred amendment requiring the support of two-thirds of the legislature.

Even as compared to other states in the Deep South, Mississippi stands apart with respect to criminal disenfranchisement, demonstrating that Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement scheme is an outdated relic of the Jim Crow era and a stain on our democracy.

What’s At Stake

This case raises an issue of exceptional importance—continuing intentional racial discrimination governing the freedom to vote. The Supreme Court should hear the case and put an end to Mississippi’s disenfranchisement system in order to preserve our core constitutional commitment to a democracy free from racial discrimination.

CLC Urges Chief Justice Roberts to Address Unethical SCOTUS Conduct

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Washington, D.C. – This morning, Campaign Legal Center sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts urging him to address allegations of unethical conduct related to the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2022 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.  

Specifically, the letter asks Chief Justice Roberts to establish a formal procedure for investigating ethical misconduct and adopt a binding code of conduct for the Justices. Public scrutiny of the Justices’ behavior has raised unanswered questions about substantial alleged misconduct, which harms the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.  

“The public has a right to know whether the Chief Justice intends to accept the status quo of questionable ethics practices chip away at the Court’s reputation, or if you are committed to rebuilding public trust. We ask that your Report take a step in the direction of change and state this commitment,” wrote Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center.  

The Supreme Court’s inability to meaningfully investigate and address misconduct allegations internally could require the Department of Justice to step in and investigate Justices. This precedent was established in 1969 when the Justice Department conducted an ethics investigation into Justice Abe Fortas, who ultimately resigned.  

The letter urges the nation’s highest court to join the lower federal courts and the executive and legislative branches of government in establishing an internal ethics office and binding code of conduct.

Read the letter here. 

Issues
Ethics
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