All three of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices in declining to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania.
In a short order issued Friday, the Court declared that Texas lacked standing to bring its case against Pennsylvania and three other states whose election rules were changed outside their respective state legislatures, as the Constitution requires.
Throughout Barrett’s confirmation process this past fall, Democrats suggested that Trump had appointed her in exchange for favorable judgements during the election. Barrett denied that the president had ever raised the election with her at all.
The three new Trump appointees voted with their liberal colleagues, whose votes were never in doubt. Roberts has lately moved toward the liberal camp, and voted accordingly. Ironically, only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both appointed by Trump’s Republican predecessors (George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively), voted to hear the case. Four justices out of the nine would have had to agree to hear the case for it to have proceeded at the Supreme Court.
Conservative radio host Mark Levin, commenting on the Court’s decision, remarked that it may have “slit its own throat,” because the same rules being challenged in Georgia would apply to the Senate runoffs in January, and Democrats have discussed packing the Court with new liberal justices if they win both Senate seats and take control of the upper chamber.
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