The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an offer tabled by Texas and backed by President Donald Trump to attempt to reverse Joe Biden’s election victories in key swing states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The ruling dealt a death blow to Trump’s desperate and unsuccessful efforts to undo Biden’s planned victory at the electoral college.
It took three days for voters to cast their ballots in their respective states and finalize the former Democratic vice president’s victory.
Suffrage experts said from the start that the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed. But Trump, who himself had applied to intervene in the case, had hyped Paxton’s lawsuit as “the big one”.
When Supreme Court justices denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s motion to file the lawsuit against the four battlefield states, they said Texas had no reason to sue the other states for changing their voting procedures amid the coronavirus pandemic .
“The Texas state’s application for permission to file a notice of appeal is denied due to a lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution,” the court said. In order for a person or organization, like a state, to be legally sued, it must be able to demonstrate that it has been harmed by the actions of another.
“Texas has shown no judicial interest in the way any other state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as in dispute,” the Supreme Court said.
Trump said in a tweet late Friday, “The Supreme Court has really let us down.”
“No wisdom, no courage!”
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who led his campaign to challenge the election results, told Newsmax in an interview: “We’re not done yet. Believe me.”
Giuliani told the news agency that the Texas case “wasn’t on the merits, it was denied standing up. The answer to that is to take the case to the district court now by the president, by some of the voters – some of the same Facts say where it would be. “
“Nothing prevents us from filing these cases immediately in the district court, where the president would, of course, stand that some of the voters had spoken out in favor of violating their constitutional rights,” added the former New York mayor.
But Trump, who appointed three judges to the nine-member court, said ahead of the Nov. 3 election that he believed the Supreme Court would ultimately rule the race.
“I think it is very important that we have nine judges,” Trump said shortly after the death of the liberal judiciary Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September.
Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Ginsburg. She was approved by the Republican-controlled Senate over fierce objections from Democrats who said the appointment was inappropriateness because it was so close to the election.
Biden spokesman Mike Gwin said in a statement on Friday evening that the court had “decided and quickly rejected the recent attack by Donald Trump and his allies on the democratic process.”
“This is no surprise – dozens of judges, election officials from both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have rejected his baseless attempts to deny that he lost the election,” said Gwin. “The clear and authoritative victory of President-elect Biden will be confirmed by the electoral college on Monday and sworn in on January 20th.”
The Texas lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results of the four battlefield states by stating that their votes “cannot be counted” in the electoral college.
Biden’s victories in the four states, which together had 62 votes, had brought him over the 270-vote threshold required to secure the presidency. Biden is expected to win 306 votes, compared to 232 for Trump.
If Texas had won the lawsuit, it would have canceled Biden’s victory.
Two of the most conservative Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said in brief disagreement that they allowed Paxton’s lawsuit to be filed, but added that they would “grant no other relief” requested in the case .
“In my view, there is no discretion to refuse to file a notice of appeal in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” Alito wrote in a statement backed by Thomas. “I would therefore grant the request to file the notice of appeal, but would not grant any other relief, and I do not express an opinion on any other subject.”
NBC News legal analyst Benjamin Wittes said that while Alito and Thomas were dissenting on the decision to admit the lawsuit, they along with the seven other Supreme Court justices rejected Texas’ claims on the matter.
More than a dozen states that Trump won the referendum filed pleadings in support of the action in Texas, as did over 120 Republican Congressmen, including Kevin McCarthy, minority chairman of the House of Representatives, R-Calif., In pleadings, “Friend of the Court “.
But about two dozen states and territories that Biden had won filed their own pleadings against the Texas appeal.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., In a damning letter from her dear colleague on Friday afternoon, accused the Republicans of supporting the case of “electoral subversion that threatens our democracy”.
“This lawsuit is an act of GOP desperation that violates the principles enshrined in our American democracy,” wrote Pelosi.
“As members of Congress, we take a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution,” her letter said. “The Republicans are undermining the Constitution through their ruthless and fruitless assault on our democracy, which threatens to seriously undermine public confidence in our most sacred democratic institutions and slow our progress on the urgent challenges ahead.”
Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska who has clashed with Trump, said in a statement that the Supreme Court has finally “closed the book on the nonsense.”
“Since election night, a lot of people have puzzled voters by turning the Kenyan birther guy. ‘Chavez carved the election out of the grave conspiracy theories,’ but any rule of law American should take comfort that the Colonel The court – including all three tips from President Trump – closed the book on the nonsense, “he said.
Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, who represented her state against Paxton’s lawsuit, said the ruling was “an important reminder that we are a nation of laws, and while some may bow to the wishes of a single person, they will.” Courts don’t do this. “
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