By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The November 3 midterm elections are quickly approaching after an electoral cycle shaped to an unusual degree by decisions of the US Supreme Court, a development that prompted Justice Elena Kagan to voice alarm this week.
Republicans generally have fared better than Democrats in the spate of recent election-related cases, including in rulings on redrawing congressional districts and rolling back campaign finance restrictions. It remains to be seen, however,
whether these legal victories will help President Donald Trump's party in its quest to retain control of Congress in the midterms.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats each in the House of Representatives and Senate to overcome narrow Republican majorities in those chambers. Ceding control of either chamber to the Democrats would endanger Trump's legislative agenda and open the door to Democratic-led congressional investigations targeting the president.
Several Supreme Court rulings last year and this year have helped Republicans, on balance, make the national House map more favorable to their party in the election, though polls indicate Democrats still are in a strong position to secure a majority.
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. In a pair of landmark rulings powered by the conservative justices, the court in April gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting, and in June threw out longstanding campaign finance limits — decisions that have boosted Republicans.
But when the court issued a ruling last month rebuffing a Trump-backed effort to restrict mail voting — a mode of casting a ballot used more often by Democratic voters — only the court's two most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, publicly dissented.
Republicans seem to have gained a net benefit from the court's recent election-related rulings, according to law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University in Virginia, who said some of the key decisions "reflect longstanding conservative jurisprudential priorities."
Somin also noted the volume of litigation this cycle, saying, "It strikes me there are a lot more Supreme Court election-related cases than usual, especially in a midterm election."
REDISTRICTING ARMS RACE
The court's decision that further undercut the Voting Rights Act made it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory. Several Republican-led Southern states responded by rushing to dismantle House districts with sizable Black populations in time for the midterms. Black voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
Other Supreme Court rulings allowed starkly partisan voting maps for the midterms, fueling an unprecedented redistricting arms race between Republicans and Democrats. This battle was initiated last year when Trump urged Republican-led states to rip up existing congressional maps and draw new ones more likely to help the party pick up House seats in the midterms. Texas was the first to do so, and the Supreme Court allowed the new map.
Redistricting traditionally has been carried out by state legislatures at the start of each new decade to reflect population shifts measured by the US Census, not midway through the decade as numerous states have done recently.
Kagan, one of the court's three liberal justices, lamented a 2019 decision powered by the conservative justices that helped supercharge this political practice — called gerrymandering — that polling shows most Americans oppose. That ruling, authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, declared that federal courts have no authority to curb gerrymandering done for partisan gain.
Kagan accused the court's conservatives of having enabled increased political polarization by not reining in partisan gerrymandering, which involves states redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts based on the partisan leanings of voters to boost a political party's candidates.
"It is making what I think is unfortunately a too-polarized country even more so," Kagan told an audience at Catholic University's law school in Washington, expressing concern over implications for American democracy.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE
The Supreme Court handed Republicans a set of wins on the issue of campaign finance this year. In June, it struck down federal caps on spending by political parties in coordination with candidates in a challenge brought by Trump's vice president, JD Vance, and others. Since then, Republican committees have greatly exceeded these former limits, with their Democratic counterparts doing so to a lesser extent.
The court further bolstered coordinated spending this month by allowing a Trump administration policy giving political parties, and not just candidates, access to discounted TV and radio advertising rates.
The record for Trump and his political allies has not been perfect at the court, however. The justices last month barred Missouri from using its redrawn pro-Republican congressional map. And while the court permitted Texas to implement its pro-Republican congressional map, it subsequently allowed California's pro-Democratic map.
Additionally, the court declined last month to let the US Postal Service enforce a rule targeting mail-in ballots, following a June decision by the justices endorsing grace periods for mail voting, over Republican objections.
All told, however, the court's election-related rulings so far this cycle have favored the election priorities of Trump and his party, reflecting a broader pattern, according to University of Illinois Chicago law professor Steve Schwinn.
"Court rulings this year and over the last decade have decidedly tilted the political playing field in favor of Republicans," Schwinn said.
MORE LITIGATION POSSIBLE
Trump's history of challenging unfavorable electoral outcomes, including his false claims of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, suggests the court may be drawn into more electoral disputes after the midterms. State election officials across the country already are bracing for potential federal interference in the voting.
The Supreme Court turned away cases in which Trump and his allies challenged the 2020 election outcome. But it subsequently embraced his request for criminal immunity after Trump was indicted on federal charges over his efforts to undo his loss to Biden.
"I think additional election litigation is quite likely," George Mason's Somin said. "Whether any of it reaches the Supreme Court is much harder to predict. The court, of course, has broad discretion over which cases it decides to take."
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
