According to former White House press secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki, a majority ruling that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote this week that derailed a radical plan to change federal election laws contained an open invitation for a different kind of political shenanigans.
In her column for MSNBC, Psaki pointed to a "landmine" placed in Roberts' Moore v. Harper opinion that could allow judges to interfere in ways that state legislatures are banned from attempting by using the "independent state legislature" (ISL) theory.
As she noted, according to some legal experts, Roberts opened a door for the federal courts to step in and decide election disputes.
Psaki cited UCLA Law professor Richard L. Hasen who previously wrote for Slate, "...it is far better for this ISL theory to be resolved when it is not in the context of a disputed presidential election. It is far worse when the Supreme Court’s involvement in election cases is outcome determinative, casting new doubts on the legitimacy of the courts and the electoral process. In this case, there is no individual outcome being threatened, but rather a group of future maps. And better to have rules set and understood in advance than figured out after the fact."
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"People may give a cheer if this new power grab by the state supreme court deprives the U.S. Supreme Court of its own possible power grab in Moore v. Harper. But postponing the inevitable will not necessarily lead to better results down the line," he added.
As Psaki summed it up, "Chief Justice John Roberts' decision leaves a great deal of power in the hands of federal courts and, yes, the wildly unpopular Supreme Court, to decide election disputes. So it was a surprisingly good ruling from the majority of Supreme Court justices. But it may leave room for a lot of judicial mischief leading up to the 2024 presidential election."
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