Pennsylvania AG blasts Texas election suit as ‘seditious abuse’ of judicial process

Pennsylvania’s attorney general on Thursday called Texas’s bid to invalidate the election results of Pennsylvania and three other battleground states a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” 

The fiery Supreme Court brief from state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D), which urged the justices to “send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” came as battle lines hardened in the unprecedented and long-shot legal dispute.

Texas on Monday filed a petition to the Supreme Court seeking to stop presidential electors in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin from finalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

The three other states named as defendants in the suit — Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia — submitted their responses shortly after Pennsylvania, with 22 states and Washington, D.C., backing their effort.

Texas has the support of President Trump, who has asked the justices for permission to join the suit as a party, as well as amicus filings from 18 Republican state attorneys general.

Election law experts say the far-fetched lawsuit is unserious and has little chance of success.

“This is a press release masquerading as a lawsuit,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Irvine.

According to Hasen, the litigation suffers from a number of major defects, any of which could be fatal to Texas’s case. He said Texas lacks the legal right to sue over how other states conduct their elections, that the suit is likely better suited to a different forum than the Supreme Court and that the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) likely waited too long to bring the challenge.

“The remedy Texas suggests of disenfranchising tens of millions of voters after the fact is unconstitutional,” he added, in a post that appeared on the Election Law Blog.

Additionally, legal experts said that even if the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case, the justices almost certainly will not intervene before the electors vote to finalize Biden’s victory on Monday.

Updated at 3:36 p.m.