Supreme Court rejects Texas attempt to halt Biden’s win because of GA election results
Update: The Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn election results in Georgia and three other battleground states Friday evening.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,” an order from the court reads.
Original: Attorneys representing the state of Georgia argue that the U.S. Supreme Court should refuse to hear a lawsuit that attempts to scrap President-elect Joe Biden’s Nov. 3 win in the state.
Georgia’s Thursday afternoon response comes after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit over election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The goal is to prevent the battleground state electors from casting ballots for Biden in the Electoral College. State legislatures would select a new set of electors, who would then vote for President Donald Trump. Legal experts have said the Texas lawsuit is a “long-shot” as the electors prepare to vote Dec. 14.
Georgia’s legal argument
Georgia’s lawyers argued that:
- Texas has no legal standing to bring the case before the Supreme Court.
- The lawsuit raises political but not legal issues.
- The case doesn’t meet the ‘high standard” necessary for the court to arbitrate disputes between states, and the claims presented don’t involve a controversy between states.
- Texas doesn’t meet the legal requirements for its temporary restraining order.
“The novel and far-reaching claims that Texas asserts, and the breathtaking remedies it seeks, are impossible to ground in legal principles and unmanageable. This Court has never allowed one state to co-opt the legislative authority of another state, and there are no limiting or manageable principles to cabin that kind of overreach,” a portion of the filing reads.
The Texas lawsuit and its supporters
Among the claims in the original 154-page filing, Paxton alleges officials in these states used the COVID-19 pandemic to “(usurp) their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their state’s election statutes.” These changes “opened the door to election irregularities in various forms.” Mail-in ballots weren’t in proper custody. Signature verification and witness requirements were weakened.
A total of 18 states have joined Texas in the lawsuit, and Georgia Republican politicians have stated their support. U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler said in a joint statement that they “fully support” the filing. Sixteen state Senators and Senators-elect have also said they support Paxton’s lawsuit.
“The President has every right to use every legal recourse available to guarantee these simple principles: every lawful vote cast should be counted, any illegal vote submitted cannot be counted, and there must be full transparency and uniformity in the counting process,” a portion of Perdue and Loeffler’s statement reads. “This isn’t hard and it isn’t partisan. It’s American. No one should ever have to question the integrity of our elections system and the credibility of its outcomes.”
As of Dec. 10, 22 states and territories have expressed support of Georgia and the other battleground states named in the Texas lawsuit. In their filing, the states have asked the Supreme Court to “to reject Texas’s last-minute attempt to throw out the results of an election decided by the people and securely overseen and certified by its sister states.”
This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 4:56 PM with the headline "Supreme Court rejects Texas attempt to halt Biden’s win because of GA election results."