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4 

MOORE v. HARPER 

Syllabus 

for present purposes, the Court embraced the core principle espoused
in Hildebrant and Smiley: Whatever authority was responsible for re-
districting, that entity remained subject to constraints set forth in the 
State Constitution.  The Court dismissed the argument that the Elec-
tions Clause divests state constitutions of the power to enforce checks
against the exercise of legislative power.

The basic principle of these cases—reflected in Smiley’s unanimous 
command  that  a  state  legislature  may  not  “create  congressional  dis-
tricts independently of” requirements imposed “by the state constitu-
tion  with respect  to  the  enactment  of  laws,”  285  U. S., at  373—com-
mands continued respect.  Pp. 15–18. 

(b) The precedents of this Court have long rejected the view that 
legislative action under the Elections Clause is purely federal in char-
acter, governed only by restraints found in the Federal Constitution. 
The argument to the contrary does not account for the Framers’ un-
derstanding that when legislatures make laws, they are bound by the 
provisions  of  the  very  documents  that  give  them  life.   Thus,  when  a 
state  legislature  carries  out  its  federal  constitutional  power  to  pre-
scribe rules regulating federal elections, it acts both as a lawmaking
body created and bound by its state constitution, and as the entity as-
signed particular authority by the Federal Constitution.  Both consti-
tutions restrain the state legislature’s exercise of power. 

This Court’s decision in McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U. S. 1, in which 
the  Court  analyzed  the  Constitution’s  similarly  worded  Electors 
Clause, is inapposite.  That decision did not address any conflict be-
tween state constitutional provisions and state legislatures.  Nor does 
Leser v. Garnett, 258 U. S. 130, which involved a contested vote by a 
state legislature to ratify a federal constitutional amendment, help pe-
titioners.  That case concerned the power of state legislatures to ratify
amendments to the Federal Constitution.  But fashioning regulations 
governing  federal  elections  “unquestionably  calls  for  the  exercise  of
lawmaking authority.”  Arizona State Legislature, 576 U. S., at 808, n. 
17.  And the exercise of such authority in the context of the Elections 
Clause is subject to the ordinary constraints on lawmaking in the state 
constitution.  Pp. 18–22. 

(c) Petitioners concede that at least some state constitutional pro-
visions  can  restrain  a  state  legislature’s  exercise  of  authority  under 
the Elections Clause, but they read Smiley and Hildebrant to differen-
tiate  between  procedural  and  substantive  constraints.   But  neither 
case drew such a distinction, and petitioners do not in any event offer
a defensible line between procedure and substance in this context.  Pp.
22–24. 

(d)  Historical  practice  confirms  that  state  legislatures  remain