COURT WON’T FAST-TRACK REQUESTS
Justices refuse to expedite challenges to election results
In a series of unsigned orders Monday, the Supreme Court refused requests from President Donald Trump and his allies to expedite consideration of various challenges to the results of the presidential election.
The court will consider whether to hear the cases in the ordinary course in the next month or two, but the orders in effect made the challenges moot. Presidentelect Joe Biden will be sworn in Jan. 20.
As is the court’s custom, the orders gave no reasons. There were no dissents noted.
Among the cases the court declined to expedite were Trump v. Biden and Trump v. Boockvar, which challenged the results in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, respectively. Other cases filed by Trump allies objected to the outcomes in Michigan and Georgia.
Trump had hoped that the Supreme Court, which includes three of his appointees, would overturn the results of the election. But the court has uniformly rejected challenges to the election results.
On Dec. 11, it dismissed a bid by Trump and the state of Texas to overturn the results in those four battleground states won by Biden, blocking the president’s legal path to reverse his reelection loss.
The court’s unsigned order was short, and it denied Texas’ request to sue the states over how they conducted their elections. Texas has not shown it has a
legal interest “in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the order said. It dismissed all pending motions about the case.
While Chief Justice John Roberts has drawn the ire of the right for the rejection, no justice on the court said they would have granted Texas the remedy it sought, which was to disallow the electors certified by the states.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they did not think the court had the authority to simply
reject a state’s filing and not consider the issue, but both said they were not prepared to grant the relief Texas sought.
Earlier that week, the court without noted dissent had rejected a similar request from Republicans in Pennsylvania. Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court.
Trump said after the decisions that the Supreme Court “really let us down,” and has expanded his criticism of the justices since then.
The court has taken no action on whether to take up a case from Pennsylvania concerning the ability of state courts and officials to alter voting procedures put in place by the state legislature. It concerns increasing the time for the state to count mail-in ballots, but the number of those votes is too small to affect the outcome of the results there.
The court also decided not to take up a request from Texas Democrats who wanted to force the state to offer universal mail-in voting
to everyone, not just older residents.
The party argued that the state’s restrictions violated the 26th Amendment, which extended the vote to 18-year-olds and says the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of age.”
The Supreme Court had refused to make the state offer mail-in voting to all during the campaign, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected the 26th Amendment claim. It said
Texas was within its rights because its decision did not make it more difficult for anyone to vote than it has previously been.
A district judge had agreed with the Democrats, saying that if the state was making it easier for those over 65 to vote by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic, it should offer the option to everyone.
In other action, the Supreme Court is declining to get involved in a case about free speech outside a Pittsburgh abortion clinic.
The high court turned away the case Monday. The court’s decision not to hear the case leaves in place a 2019 appeals court decision that upheld a Pittsburgh ordinance creating a 15-foot “buffer zone” where protests are barred around entrances to health care facilities. The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed “sidewalk counseling ” within that zone.
The appeals court said the city can restrict congregating, picketing, patrolling and demonstrating in the immediate vicinity of clinics, but the zone restrictions do not apply to “calm and peaceful” one-on-one conversations by anti-abortion activists seeking to speak with women entering a clinic.
Thomas wrote that he agreed with the court’s decision not to take up this particular case because it “involves unclear, preliminary questions about the proper interpretation of state law.” But he said the court should take up the issue of buffer zones in an appropriate case.