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26 some of the most politically acrimonious and fast-moving cases that come before them. In many cases, it is difficult to imagine what this inquiry could mean in theory, let alone practice. For example, suppose that we were reviewing Harper I under this framework. Perhaps we could have determined that reading justiciable prohibitions against partisan gerrymandering into the North Carolina Constitution exceeded the bounds of ordinary judicial review in North Carolina; perhaps not. If not, then, in order to ensure that Harper I had not “arrogate[d]” the power of regulating federal elections,, we would presumably have needed to ask next whether it exceeded the bounds of ordinary judicial review in North Carolina to find that the specific congressional map here violated those prohibitions. After all, in constitutional judgments of this kind, it can be difficult to separate the rule from the fact pattern to which the rule is applied. We have held, however, that federal courts are not equipped to judge partisan-gerrymandering questions at all. Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 30). It would seem to follow, a fortiori, that they are not equipped to judge whether a state court’s partisan-gerrymandering determination surpassed “the bounds of ordinary judicial review.”

Even in cases that do not involve a justiciability mismatch, the majority’s advice invites questions of the most far-reaching scope. What are “the bounds of ordinary judicial review”? What methods of constitutional interpretation do they allow? Do those methods vary from State to State? And what about stare decisis—are federal courts to review state courts’ treatment of their own precedents for some sort of abuse of discretion? The majority’s framework would seem to require answers to all of these questions and more.

In the end, I fear that this framework will have the effect of investing potentially large swaths of state constitutional law with the character of a federal question not amenable