This evening, a unanimous Supreme Court refused to grant Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton an injunction or other relief that would bar the selection of presidential electors in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As detailed in the just-released order, seven justices would deny the Texas AG’s Motion for Leave to file a complaint, citing a lack of Article III standing. Justices Alito and Thomas, citing their long-standing belief that the Court lacks the discretion to deny the motion, would have granted the motion, but would have provided Texas with no other relief. In other words, not a single justice believed Texas deserved the extraordinary relief it sought.
The Court’s order reads:
The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. 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.Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: 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. See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___ (Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.
This puts an end to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to upend the results of the November election. It should also put an end to the efforts by the Trump campaign and its allies to delegitimize or otherwise challenge the election results.
This result was not a surprise. As I indicated in my prior posts on AG Paxton’s initial filing, the intervening briefs, amici, state defendants’ responses, and Paxton’s feeble replies, this case never had merit. As the Court concluded, Texas could not satisfy the requirements of Article III standing to challenge the election procedures utilized by other states to select presidential electors. What is more, even the two justices who believed the Court was obligated to hear the case–arguably the Court’s two most conservative justices–did not believe Texas was entitled to the extraordinary relief it sought, relief which would have been necessary for AG Paxton’s last-ditch effort to have any result on the electoral college. AG Paxton’s office submitted transparently weak arguments, and the Court summarily dispatched them.
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