Election Law

City of Chester, Pennsylvania, Files For Chapter 9 Bankruptcy (bloomberglaw.com) Haywood voters elect unexperienced college student as new tax collector | News | themountaineer.com California homeowners pay for violations they didn’t commit – Orange County Register (ocregister.com) A quarter of local election officials received violent threats after 2020 election, survey finds – Oregon Capital Chronicle The People Fleeing Austin Because Texas Is Too Conservative (nymag.co

Judge Blocks Mississippi From Giving Private Schools $10 Million (mississippifreepress.org) Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricane | Ron DeSantis | The Guardian Poor, less white US neighborhoods get worst internet deals | AP News Local Ballot Measures Underscore California’s Housing Crisis (governing.com) Minneapolis moves forward on community safety office after council's OK (startribune.com) Supreme Court case could help red states defund

On September 29, SALPAL hosted a conversation on the Independent State Legislature Theory, which will be considered by the US Supreme Court this term, in the case of Moore v. Harper. Oral argument of the case on North Carolina redistricting will be heard December 7. Professor Richard Pildes, Sudler Family of Law at NYU School of Law provides a preview, commenting on the conversation that featured Carolyn Shapiro, author of an upcoming article on the Independent State Legislat

‘Black Tax’ Costs US Cities Millions to Borrow on Wall Street - Bloomberg Top State Judges Make a Rare Plea in a Momentous Supreme Court Election Case - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Cities can’t prohibit the homeless from using blankets or pillows on public property, court rules (sfchronicle.com) Mayor Breed to End Practice of Making Appointees Sign Undated Resignation Letters (sfstandard.com) For More Than 20 Guaranteed Income Projects, the Data Is In - Bloomberg

Durham’s unarmed first responders are making an impact, data shows :: WRAL.com Conservatives’ Federal Case Challenges Immigrant Voting — Using Ex-Council Members’ Own Words - THE CITY NYC's Rise of Low-Level Arrests Worry Critics of 'Broken Windows' Era - Bloomberg New 'Stability' Housing Vouchers for Homeless, At-Risk Families - Bloomberg Lakewood NJ cut down Town Square trees to deter homeless (app.com) Jackson water crisis deepens as state deploys National Guard (msn.

Meryl Chertoff, Executive Director, Georgetown Project on State and Local Government Policy & Law, Adjunct Professor of Law I have just finished reading Leah Litman and Kate Shaw’s really excellent takedown of the independent state legislature theory (ISLT) and the decision of the North Carolina Supreme Court that was granted cert as Moore v. Harper — Harper v. Hall which could be the case that decides if the Court will accept ISLT as a doctrine governing the relationship o

The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider the inde­pend­ent state legis­lature theory in the case Moore v. Harper, a case decided as...

American influence has a new address on State Street - POLITICO Ellison says MN to protect out-of-state abortions if Roe falls (twincities.com) Justices seem poised to hear elections case pressed by GOP | AP News What a New Chesapeake Bay Bridge Could Really Cost - Bloomberg Supreme Court Gun Ruling 'Frightful In Its Scope': Hochul | Yorktown, NY Patch A Digital Map to Net Zero, Via Upstate New York - Bloomberg North Dakota’s Small Schools Fight for Survival (governing.com)

Diverging Paths to Challenging Gerrymanders: Past Results and Possible Outcomes Ohio and New Jersey are far from the only states to have their maps challenged in partisan gerrymanders. In this second installment, I examine other ongoing cases. While two are based on specific prohibitions against partisan gerrymandering, the others are based on state constitutional provisions relating to elections or suffrage. Others still are based on even broader provisions, like equal prot

While some of our readers are deep in the weeds on redistricting after Rucho v Common Cause , the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision that allows the continuation of partisan gerrymandering in legislative redistricting, others may be less immersed, focusing on their home state, or monitoring a state that will be key in the 2024 Presidential election. Since we’re all about local and state, SALPAL’s inaugural State and Local Justice Fellow, Kathryn Randolph, provided an overview of w

Today's installment includes stories from outside the United States, along with domestic stories that touch on some of the most timely issues in the country right now. Check out these articles below: “Why Ukraine’s Best Hope Lies With Its Cities” The Brennan Center for Justice’s Local Election Officials Survey suggests that all is not well And “Florida is set to create a new police force to investigate elections” Tennessee is trying to take over a small, majority Black

The Little-Known Violence Prevention Tool Cropping Up in Cities Across the Country Barbershop Confrontations, Profane Signs and Despair: Pro-Biden and Alone in Rural What’s Wrong with Privately Funded ‘Post-Industrial’ Parks? America 25% of Missouri School Districts Now Provide Education Only Four Days A Week Also in Missouri, a “lawmaker seeks to stop residents from obtaining abortions out of state” And Idaho is using a similar tactic in its recent anti-trans bill, whic

Russell Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies Program, The Brookings Institution. This is an abbreviated and updated version of a recent article for Lawfare Efforts by former President Trump to reverse the 2020 election included a litigation blitzkrieg. As USA Today summarized : “[o]ut of the 62 lawsuits filed challenging the presidential election, 61 have failed.” Although dramatic, the assertion is somewhat misleading. Based on all judicial votes, Trump performed s

Judge Sutton’s two books, Fifty-One Imperfect Solutions and Who Decides? contain fascinating history lessons, much food for thought, and some practical advice. One intriguing suggestion, especially prominent in his first book, is that state courts decide questions of state constitutional law first, reaching federal constitutional questions only if necessary. As readers of this blog undoubtedly know, when it comes to constitutional rights, the federal Constitution sets a flo

After a decade and a half of uncertainty, the Supreme Court in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) closed the federal courthouse door to claims against partisan gerrymandering. Even if deeply gerrymandered districts to favor one political party over another were unconstitutional, Chief Justice Roberts declared for a conservative Court majority, federal courts were powerless to do anything about it because there were no judicially manageable standards to apply. He suggested that tho