With 2024 coming up, the Supreme Court throws out a conservative theory about elections.

The conservative argument that would have allowed state leaders a lot of power to determine election laws in their states without any monitoring from the courts was rejected by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The decision came in a 5-4 decision. Voting rights organizations were concerned that the public’s lack of trust in the country’s voting system would worsen as a result of this proposal.

According to statements made by legislators who identify as Republicans in North Carolina, one provision of the Constitution grants legislatures the authority to determine voting procedures on their own, free from the supervision of the courts. However, on Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority of the court that the provision does not prevent state courts from looking at these legislation.

This opinion was supported by a vote of 6-3. Roberts said that “from the beginning of our country’s history, courts have known that it is their job to decide whether or not laws are constitutional.” The courts have always known that it is their job to decide whether or not laws are constitutional. “When state legislators exercise the authority granted to them by the Elections Clause, the state courts nonetheless retain the authority to enforce the state constitutional boundaries.

The appeal took on a greater significance in light of the election in 2020. Several courts made decisions regarding how absentee voting would be handled while the country was under lockdown in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were some Republicans who held the opinion that the courts had exceeded their authority in a few of these cases. On the other hand, Democrats saw these options to be means by which voters might protect their right to vote and avoid having it taken away from them.