PRESS STATMENT FROM LIBERTY COUNSEL
18 States Join Texas at SCOTUS
for Presidential Election
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Eighteen states have joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the election procedures in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on the grounds that they violate the Constitution.
In Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al, AG Paxton is asking the Supreme Court to order the 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.
The High Court has ordered the defendant states to respond to the lawsuit by 3 p.m. today.
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. Thus, nineteen states are challenging the election procedures in the four defendant states. 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.
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.
The amicus brief filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, and joined by sixteen other states, argues that the case filed by Texas is of great public importance and requires the attention of the nation’s High Court. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a separate motion yesterday asking for permission to file his own brief in support of the lawsuit.
In the Texas lawsuit, AG Paxton asserts that the trust of the citizens and the integrity of the 2020 election was compromised because of “voting irregularities” and violations of the statutes by the four states. Texas argues the states flooded the citizens with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements, involving how they were received, evaluated, and counted.
Paxton argues that these 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.
The suit, which says the election “suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities,” also claims there were “intrastate differences” in how certain voters were treated and that there was an unconstitutional “relaxation” of ballot-integrity laws.
The lawsuit declares: “Certain officials in the Defendant States presented the pandemic as the justification for ignoring state laws regarding absentee and mail-in voting. The Defendant States flooded their citizenry with tens of millions of ballot applications and ballots in derogation of statutory controls as to how they are lawfully received, evaluated, and counted. Whether well intentioned or not, these unconstitutional acts had the same uniform effect—they made the 2020 election less secure in the Defendant States. Those changes are inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.”
Paxton also argues that the Supreme Court is the only venue to resolve the multi-state dispute.
“This action against multiple State defendants is the only adequate remedy for Plaintiff States, and this Court is the only court that can accommodate such a suit.” the lawsuit states.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the “times, places, and manner of holding elections” may only be prescribed by the state “legislature” and “Congress.”
“Encroachments on the authority of state Legislatures by other state actors violate the separation of powers and threaten individual liberty,” the states wrote.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated, “This Texas lawsuit is a result of ‘We The People’ demanding fair and transparent elections which are the foundation of a free society. This historic legal action can have a significant impact on this presidential election as well as every election in the future. We must follow the law and protect the fundamental right of the people to elect their leaders. The Founders set the precedent in the Constitution, and it cannot be ignored.”
