SCOTUS Shoots Down TX Election Reversal Gambit Praised By Trump As ‘The Big One’

CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON DC, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2013/06/01: Supreme Court Building, eastern facade. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)
CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON DC, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2013/06/01: Supreme Court Building, eastern facade. (Photo by John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Texas’ unhinged bid to overturn the election results in four battleground states will end not in a bang, but a whimper.

The Supreme Court on Friday said that Texas did not meet the procedural thresholds that would warrant the court’s review of its lawsuit.

The order is the latest defeat President Trump’s allies have suffered in court in their attempts to muck up Joe Biden electoral victory.

After the Supreme Court rejected a similar Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to disturb those results, Trump promised that the Texas gambit was actually “the big one.”

Texas was seeking to invoke what’s known as original jurisdiction — which gives the Supreme Court the exclusive authority to hear legal disputes between the states  — so it could sue Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan to challenge those states’ election results. All four states elected Biden. But Texas was arguing —by citing conspiracy theories about how the states’ handled their elections — that the Supreme Court should void those results and let the legislatures determine the electors that would be sent to the Electoral College instead.

The court did not weigh in on the merits of those claims. Rather, Supreme Court said in unsigned order on Friday that Texas had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.”

The order came with a separate statement from Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, who took a different view of the court’s procedural obligations to review the case.

“In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction,” the statement said, though it added that justices would not have granted Texas’ request to immediately block those states from formalizing Biden’s victory  and that they were expressing “no view on any other issue.”

Read the order below:

Latest News
1117
Show Comments

Notable Replies

  1. “Hail to the Chief” becomes “Sad Trombone.”

  2. ”The order is the latest defeat President Trump’s allies have suffered in court in their attempts to muck up Joe Biden electoral victory.”

    Trump’s now lost the Presidency more times than Harold Stassen.

    (G-d, I’m old.)

  3. Yes! Sadly, the damage has already been done, though.

  4. U know why i can’t quickly look, but how many weeks til 1/5?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

1111 more replies

Participants

Avatar for ajm Avatar for srfromgr Avatar for mondfledermaus Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for cervantes Avatar for george_spiggott Avatar for teenlaqueefa Avatar for sandyh Avatar for ralph_vonholst Avatar for gr Avatar for esva Avatar for grandpajoe Avatar for pine Avatar for darrtown Avatar for pshah Avatar for thunderclapnewman Avatar for tena Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for rhs1963 Avatar for heartflow Avatar for zenicetus Avatar for rucleare Avatar for dogselfie Avatar for KalTX

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: