Supreme Court rejects Republican-backed Montana case based on controversial election law theory

The Supreme Court has turned back an election law case out of Montana that relied on a controversial legal theory with the potential to change the way elections are run across the country. Montana was fighting a ruling that struck down two Republican-backed election laws. The state relied on the independent state legislature theory, which holds that state judges shouldn’t be allowed to consider election cases at all. The Supreme Court largely rejected the independent state legislature theory in a 2023 case known as Moore v. Harper. That case out of North Carolina focused on a legal argument that electoral maps can’t be challenged in court.