Rather than ruling on the merits of the Texas election complaint, the esteemed Justices ran for the hills … and may have diminished the future political independence and relevance of the court itself.
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Yesterday, it was reported that Pelosi’s Congress has started drafting a law to pack the Supreme Court with 4 new (liberal) justices.
How did we get to this point … and what are the implications?
Flashback to a couple of weeks after the 2020 presidential election.
The Supreme Court “docketed” a complaint filed by the State of Texas (and a long-list of other complainants) that claimed voting irregularities in a handful of of states (details below).
I assumed that “docketed” meant that they would hear the evidence and rule on the case’s merits.
Silly me.
Recognizing that they would be caught between a rock and a hard place, the SCOTUS channeled Sgt. Shultz claim (“I hear nothing, I see nothing”) to stay out of the election dispute.
For the record, here’s the first part of the official SCOTUS statement:
ORDER IN PENDING CASE (155, ORIG.) TEXAS V. PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL.
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.
The key point: This isn’t a ruling on the merits of the case, i.e. whether there was election irregularities, fraud and rigging … or not.
The Court just decided to rule on procedural technicalities and leave the merits of the case open for all of us to decide.
That leaves about half the country thinking that the election was clean as a whistle … and, half suspicious of the election’s processes and results.
The obvious result: high tension and animosity.
Given its importance, let’s parse the court’s statement….
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The 2 key phrases are highlighted above: “lack of standing” and “a judicially cognizable interest.”
The former, “standing”, suggests that Texas — as an individual state — has no right to a hearing. That is, technically speaking, Texas wasn’t harmed … and everybody knows “no harm, no foul.”
The statement is silent on whether the handful of states that joined Texas in the motion were collectively harmed.
And, the statement is silent on whether Pres. Trump — who also joined the motion — was individually harmed if the case could be proven on its merits.
Noting the big “if” … surely, the latter is true.
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In plain English, “a judicially cognizable interest” means that the Court is saying that the case is outside of its jurisdiction.
To the contrary, Texas claimed:
This Court is the sole forum in which to exercise the jurisdictional basis for this action.
No court — other than this Court —can redress constitutional injuries spanning multiple States with the sufficient number of states joined as defendants.
Anybody remember when candidate Al Gore was alleged to be illegally soliciting campaign contributions?
In defense, Gore claimed that “there is no controlling legal authority that says that any of these activities violated any law.”
Apparently, SCOTUS internalized Gore’s line of argument: if state courts claim it’s not their job … and SCOTUS can claim that they don’t have “original jurisdiction” and aren’t a controlling authority … then there’s nothing illegal, right?
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Not all Justices concurred with the statement.
There was a second part: a “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.
Though they explicitly avoid any views on the merits of the case or support for any injunctions while the case were being heard, Alito and Thomas concluded that the case should at least be heard on its merits.
Note that Trump-appointed Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett thought otherwise.
That should give Dems comfort going forward.
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Post-Georgia, the Dems now control the Senate (and the Congress) giving them free reign to deliver on Schumer’s promise to “pack the court” with additional liberal justices.
In other words, the SCOTUS non-ruling may have paved the way for the Court itself to become a political panel with diminished standing as an independent body.
If that happens, whining by the current SCOTUS justices will fall on deaf ears.
Their “esteem” will be diminished, but they did it to themselves!
The Homa Files 
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