On December 8, 2020, the Republican Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Michigan violated federal law by changing election law prior to the election, claiming that voter fraud would be “undetectable.” The lawsuit is basically asking the Supreme Court to disenfranchise millions of voters in battleground states and overturn the results of a fair, free election with no evidence of voter fraud.
In a last-ditch effort, Paxton brought a lawsuit to the Supreme Court, titled Texas v. Pennsylvania, which in essence, is asking the court to ignore millions of legally cast votes in four battleground states: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Paxton has been a controversial figure: he is not only fighting in the Supreme Court in Texas v. California to get the court to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which would strip health care protections away from 22 million Americans) and battled with Texas Democrats to stop the expansion of mail voting in the state. He is also a staunch supporter of the president, fighting tooth and nail to support him.
Since he brought the lawsuit to the Supreme Court, a number of Republican-led states have supported him, and Texas, while a number of Democratic-led states (and territories) have filed a brief to the Supreme Court in support of the defending states. Because the lawsuit involves different states, the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction over the case.
The suit comes as the Supreme Court rejected to hear a lawsuit regarding Pennsylvania’s election results and over 50 losses in court for the Trump campaign.
The four defending states have already issued stunning rebuttals of the lawsuit. Georgia A.G. Chris Carr said that Texas “presses a generalized grievance that does not involve the sort of direct state-against-state controversy required for original jurisdiction,” bringing up implications of federalism.
Pennsylvania A.G. Josh Shapiro said that “Texas’ effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.” He went on to say that the suit was based on a “surreal alternate reality.”
Michigan A.G. Dana Nessel said that “the election in Michigan is over. Texas comes as a stranger to this matter and should not be heard here. (…) The challenge here is an unprecedented one, without factual foundation or a valid legal basis.”
Wisconsin A.G. Josh Kaul denounced the suit as an “extraordinary intrusion into Wisconsin’s and the other defendant State’s elections, a task that the Constitution leaves to each State.”
Though President Trump and 100 House Republicans have filed briefs in support of this lawsuit, the suit is simply unlikely to succeed. As judges in different courts have shown, they are unwilling to prioritize the person or party who put them in their positions over American democracy. SCOTUSBlog has called the lawsuit a “hail Mary” and deemed it very unlikely to succeed.
The fact that we are still talking about the results of an election that happened over a month ago is unfathomable. The current administration is actively engaged in an effort to undermine America’s electoral systems, going as far as to ask the nation’s highest court to step in and overrule millions of legally cast ballots. Despite not all Republicans support the lawsuit, with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) saying he “frankly struggle[s] to understand the legal theory of [the lawsuit],” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) calling the suit “madness” and “dangerous and destructive of the cause of democracy,” and other congresspeople calling out the party on it, the fact that so many Republicans are engaged in a seditious effort and normalized it is absolutely unacceptable.
In addition, the suit is entirely against America’s principle of federalism. The Constitution explicitly leaves some tasks, like elections, up to the state level. By intervening in other states’ elections, the attorneys general are essentially completely ignoring this principle. In addition, the state’s argument is flawed, as it fails to explain why Texas has a right to interfere with other state’s elections. Also, the procedures Texas objects to were in place prior to the election, so it probably wouldn’t stand in court.
Finally, though the suit brought up by Paxton is legally and physically ludicrous, the political reasoning behind it is not. Paxton is caught up in a scandal right now. In 2015, he was indicted in a securities fraud case by a grand jury in three different courts, and the case is still unresolved. If indicted and resolved, the crimes would amount to felonies. In October, seven aides accused him of bribery, abuse of office, and other possible criminal offenses. With him attending a lunch in Washington with Trump soon, it isn’t hard to see why he is doing this: he could be trying to get a pardon from the president before he leaves office, something the president is mulling over for over 20 aides.
The lawsuit is evidently inherently politically motivated, and is thus unlikely to succeed in court.
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