Texas Election Challenge Heating Up, Now We Wait For SCOTUS To Weigh In
December 11, 2020
BUTT OUT
|“In blistering language denouncing Republican efforts to subvert the election, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to reject a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the victories in those states by PRESIDENT-ELECT JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. calling the audacious effort an affront to democracy and the rule of law.” Adam Liptak and Jeremy W. Peters with The New York Times report on the states’ responses to the Texas lawsuit now supported by Republicans in 17 other states and 106 Republican members of Congress. They note that the four states “comprehensively critiqued Texas’s unusual request to have the Supreme Court act as a kind of trial court in examining supposed election irregularities with the goal of throwing out millions of votes.”
THE WAITING GAME
|Ariane de Vogue and Dan Berman with CNN explain what comes next in the long-shot case attempting to overturn the election results. They note that by Thursday afternoon, the court’s docket was “bursting with briefs” regarding the suit. “Texas Attorney General KEN PAXTON had filed the opening salvo earlier in the week, seeking to sue four battleground states and invalidate their election results. Thursday, lawyers for those states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — responded, blistering Paxton’s arguments and stressing that he had no right to bring such an unusual suit, particularly at the Supreme Court. At the same time, a myriad of states and more than 100 members of Congress filed so-called ‘friend of the court’ or ‘amicus’ briefs on both sides of the issue meant to educate the justices on every angle of the dilemma — or at least score political points. The Supreme Court is ground zero of a fight between the states. Now the great wait begins.”
RUNNING OUT OF TIME
|David Nakamura and Robert Barnes with The Washington Post report on PRESIDENT TRUMP’S assault on the election results, including false claims he made on Twitter this week. They also note, “The appeal to the Supreme Court came days before the statutory deadline Monday for electoral college representatives in each state to vote on final certification of the results and send them to Congress for ratification early next month. The justices could decide as soon as Friday whether to accept the case, which seeks to take advantage of the allowance that lawsuits between states may be filed directly at the Supreme Court.”
NOT GOING ANYWHERE
|Savanna Behrmann with USA Today takes a look at SCOTUS refusing to stop Pennsylvania from finalizing JOE BIDEN’S victory in the state. “The [Supreme Court] dismissed the case without a single justice dissent. It was a one-sentence denial. But supreme courts in several battleground states have offered their explanations for rejecting efforts to overturn local elections.” In Michigan, for example, its state supreme court denied requests from two voters who backed Trump and sought an election audit and other actions to address alleged fraud related to absentee ballots.
DOESN'T FLY WITH SCOTUS
|Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 to that federal agents can be sued for putting Muslim men on the no-fly list in alleged retaliation for their refusal to cooperate with counterterrorism investigations. The outcome marks a rare expansion of personal liability for law enforcement. The case involved three Muslim men who said their religious freedom rights were violated when FBI agents tried to use the no-fly list to force them into becoming informants. JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS wrote for the court.
ONE BIG CATCH
|Ian Millhiser with Vox reacts to the no-fly list case and says the facts underlying it are “enraging.” He writes, “The plaintiffs are Muslims who claim that FBI agencies placed them on the no-fly list in retaliation for the plaintiffs’ refusal to act as informants against other members of their Muslim communities. One of these plaintiffs, Muhammad Tanvir, alleged that he was unable to see his ailing mother in Pakistan, and that he had to quit his job as a long-haul trucker because he could no longer fly home after a one-way delivery. The court’s decision in Tanzin means that these Muslim plaintiffs will be allowed to seek money damages from the FBI agents who allegedly violated their religious rights — although it is possible that the agents will escape liability because of a doctrine known as ‘qualified immunity.'”
NO LIMITS
|The Supreme Court handed down another unanimous decision in a major case involving military rape cases. The justices ruled that the military can prosecute at any time sexual assault and rape cases committed between 1986 and 2006, overturning a loophole of a five-year statute of limitations that existed for sexual assault before 2006. It was the first time justices ruled on a sexual assault issue in the #MeToo era.
FEDERAL EXECUTIONS CONTINUE
|Last night, BRANDON BERNARD was executed after failed eleventh-hour appeals from criminal justice advocates and celebrities to spare his life. Bernard was convicted for his involvement in the brutal murder of two youth ministers in 1999. It was the first execution carried out during a presidential transition period in 130 years. Jaclyn Diaz with NPR reports.