Dozens of judges reject attempts to reverse election

Challenges to Biden’s win met with near unanimity nationwide

WASHINGTON — They are both elected and appointed, selected by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Some have served for decades — while others took the bench only months ago.

One is a former high school teacher, another the first Native American woman appointed to a federal judgeship. A third worked for years for a Republican governor who has been a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump.

Since the November election, they have all ruled in court against Trump or one of his allies seeking to challenge or overturn the presidential vote.

In a remarkable show of near unanimity across the nation’s judiciary, at least 86 judges — ranging from jurists serving at the lowest levels of state court systems to members of the United States Supreme Court — rejected at least one post-election lawsuit filed by Trump or his supporters, a Washington Post review of court filings found.

The string of losses was punctuated Friday by the brief and blunt order of the Supreme Court, which dismissed an attempt by the state of Texas to thwart the electoral votes of four states that went for President-elect Joe Biden.

Taken together, the judges’ decisions — some short and to the point and others sweeping defenses of American democracy — have comprehensively dismantled the arguments advanced by Trump in his effort to get the courts to subvert Biden’s victory.

In an era when so many institutions of American life have bowed to partisan tribalism, the dozens of opinions serve as a resounding reaffirmation of the judiciary’s nonpartisan commitment to basic principles of reason, fact and law.

“Voters, not lawyers, choose the President,” declared U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stephanos Bibas, a former prosecutor and law professor appointed in 2017 by Trump, as he rejected an attempt to throw out Pennsylvania’s votes for Biden.

“Federal judges do not appoint the president in this country,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Pamela Pepper, who was nominated by President Barack Obama. “One wonders why the plaintiffs came to federal court and asked a federal judge to do so.”

Trump’s attempt to block certification of Biden’s win in Georgia “would breed confusion and potentially disenfranchisement that I find has no basis in fact or in law,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg, whom Trump named to the bench last year.

Before Election Day, federal judges nominated by Trump largely ruled against efforts to loosen voting rules in the 2020 campaign, siding with Republicans seeking to enforce restrictions, a previous Post analysis found.