Government

AZ GOP Congratulates Itself On Getting The Same Case Tossed By Two Courts In 24 Hours

Flawless Victory!

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Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Crazytown) may not be winning in court. In fact his ridiculous lawsuit against Mike Pence attempting to vindicate the Vice President’s right to reject state electors at will was dismissed by both the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit. But the congressman does seem to have broken the federal judiciary’s land speed record, with the appeals court coming in on a holiday weekend to flush that particular bit of legal excretia post haste.

“The problem for Plaintiffs here is that they lack standing. Plaintiff Louie Gohmert, the United States Representative for Texas’s First Congressional District, alleges at most an institutional injury to the House of Representatives. Under well settled Supreme Court authority, that is insufficient to support standing,” wrote Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle, a Trump appointee. “The other Plaintiffs, the slate of Republican Presidential Electors for the State of Arizona (the “Nominee-Electors”), allege an injury that is not fairly traceable to the Defendant, the Vice President of the United States, and is unlikely to be redressed by the requested relief.”

And while the court didn’t exactly accuse the Arizona plaintiffs of forum shopping by linking up with the Texas congressman in an effort to get another bite at the apple, it did note that the same slate of purported Arizona electors had already been booted for lack of standing by the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona as they were “not candidates for office as the term is generally understood.”

Gohmert, who served as both a trial and appellate judge in Texas, purported to be shocked, shocked at Judge Kernodle’s New Years Day ruling.

And yet, Fifth Circuit Judges Higginbotham, Smith, and Oldham — appointed by Reagan, Reagan, and Trump — were no more sympathetic to Gohmert’s case than the trial court, issuing a one-paragraph brush off on Saturday, January 2.

“We have the benefit of the briefing before the district court and its 13-page opinion styled Order of Dismissal, issued January 1, 2021. That order adopts the position of the Department of Justice, finding that the district court lacks jurisdiction because no plaintiff has the standing demanded by Article III,” they wrote. “We need say no more.”

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The Deep State strikes again!

Obviously this is very good news for the plaintiffs. Getting bounced out of multiple courts in short order just gets your very good case closer to its final, victorious destination.

Too subtle?

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Oh, well, in that case, the Supreme Court will get right on that. Just as soon as the justices finish up with that application to toss out late-arriving ballots in Pennsylvania filed by the Trump campaign in September — plus the eleventy-seven other bogus election cases already clogging up the SCOTUS docket.

Look out, Krakenheads. Uncle Louie is coming for your crazy crown!

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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