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Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Izger.

We've got more Supreme Court content today including some Supreme Court content regarding voting and gerrymandering that got a little controversial.

We're going to try to break it all down for you today. That's going to be a big part of the podcast.

We're going to also, okay, we are actually Sarah. I think we're going to do it. We're doing it. We're doing it.

It's number two today. It's number two on the menu. Yeah.

Ketanji Brown Jackson's controversial case that is so controversial that has bumped from two to three consecutive advisory opinions podcasts.

If we have time, we'll talk about a free speech on campus dust up where some folks got very, very, very angry that a senior at the University of Virginia wrote an op-ed saying that there are a lot of people are afraid to speak their minds of college.

So an old argument arises again and we'll get to that if we've got time. But first Sarah Supreme Court refuses, refuses an application for a stay to stay the effect of a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling that rejected the state's gerrymander.

You want to kind of set this thing up and talk about the controversy and more role from there.

Yeah. So this was another emergency docket case shadow docket. Now, remember a few weeks back the court basically undid a federal courts map in Alabama.

So this is the Supreme Court leaving in place a state Supreme Court's map in North Carolina. Pennsylvania was also involved, but we're just going to ignore Pennsylvania pretend the Pennsylvania didn't happen.

And so look what happens is the North Carolina legislature draws a map. The state Supreme Court says that the state constitution bars partisan gerrymandering. The state constitution says that it will guarantee free, quote, unquote free elections in the state Supreme Court interprets that to me, no partisan gerrymandering.

So they reject the legislatures drawn map and draw their own map back goes up to the Supreme Court Supreme Court refuses to stay that state Supreme Court map leaving in place this the court drawn but the state court drawn map.

Toledo, Thomas, Gorsuch, dissent, Kavanaugh has a concurrence that we're going to talk about as well. But that means by the way that not only Kagan, Briar, so do my or, but Roberts and Barrett.

Don't write so we don't know we just know that they leave in place the state Supreme Court map and that's going to get really important particularly on the Barrett side. But before we can get to the meatiness of this, we kind of got to go back and do some Supreme Court history on voting.

So we're going way back 2015. That's way back the way back machine. Yeah. So in 2015, there's a case called Arizona State Legislature versus Arizona Independent redistricting commission.

And it's exactly what it sounds like from the title right the Arizona State Legislature. Sues because the it there was an Arizona ballot measure basically that passed that said that districts would be drawn by an independent redistricting commission and a state legislature claimed that the Constitution says the time place and manner of choosing house and Senate representation.

We'll be decided by the state legislatures. And it's kind of a weird opinion, David, because it's 2015, but it feels like it could have been so much earlier than that.

It's Ginsburg writing for the majority. It's Ginsburg, Briar, so do my or Kagan and Kennedy joins. That's your five. Okay. Right.

And basically Ginsburg says, look, when the Constitution says legislature in the election clause, you know, people passing a ballot measure that is legislating of a kind and therefore it fits within the pernumbers and imitations of the elections clause basically.

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