A group of 106 House Republicans have joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of the 2020 presidential election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al, AG Paxton is asking the Supreme Court to order the four states to allow their legislatures to appoint their electors. The lawsuit also proclaims that the states enacted last-minute changes, skewing the results of the 2020 presidential election. As a result, Texas voters and the voters in other states were disenfranchised. All four states have since filed their response to Texas’s request.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) led the effort for the legislators in filing an amicus brief. In the brief, they asked the High Court to uphold the power of state legislatures to establish how presidential electors are appointed and to determine the constitutionality of ballots cast and counted under election rules established by non-legislative officials. They urged the Justices to “provide an objective review of these anomalies and to determine for the people if indeed the Constitution has been followed and the rule of law maintained.”
The legislators wrote, “In the months before the 2020 election, those rules were deliberately changed by both state and non-state actors. No state constitution, state law, state governor, state election official, or court can alter or constrain that grant of power.”
AG Paxton argues that those four states violated the Electors Clause of the Constitution because they made changes to voting rules and procedures through the courts or through executive actions, but not through the state legislatures. In the lawsuit, he declares that there were differences in voting rules and procedures in different counties within the states, violating the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
In addition to Texas, the 18 states joining the lawsuit are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia. Seventeen states joined together on one amicus brief and Arizona filed its own separate motion to file an amicus brief. The combined total of 19 states equates to 38 percent of the states contesting the election results as a direct consequence of what transpired in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Yesterday, the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah also filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to let them intervene in the lawsuit. The six states stated they should be allowed to join the lawsuit, arguing that their motion was timely, that they have an interest in the transaction in question, that their interests may be harmed by the disposition of the action and that they are not adequately represented in the action.
President Donald Trump has also asked the High Court to allow him to join Texas as a party in the case since his rights as a presidential candidate are affected by the defendant states’ failure to follow and enforce state election laws during the 2020 election.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated, “The illegal actions of officials in four states violated the Constitution and made the 2020 election less secure for all voters. In a presidential election when one state makes the election less secure, that state affects voters in all the states. Every American’s vote has been violated.”
