This is a list of the election cases still active at SCOTUS. Thanks to SLQ at the Fogbow for adding one I missed. There may be more but this is what I could find yesterday. Three are appeals from state supreme courts. Four are appeals from federal circuit courts.
The only case that might be heard is 20-542. That is the one on the three day extension for receiving mail in ballots in Pennsylvania. Justice Alito issued an order to kept such ballots separated in case plaintiffs prevail. This case will not change the outcome in Pennsylvania.
A link to the docket for each case is provided. If I missed any cases please provide the case number in a comment.
Update January 19, 2021:
Thanks to Marc Elias. I added 20-816, which is the last of the Georgia Kraken cases.
L. Lin Wood, Jr., Petitioner v. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, et al.
Appeal from the Eleventh Circuit. December 8th: Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due January 11, 2021) No response or waiver docketed yet.
Kelli Ward, Petitioner v. Constance Jackson, et al.
Appeal from Supreme Court of Arizona. Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due January 14, 2021) No response or waiver on docket. Motion to expedite denied on January 11.
Timothy King, et al., Petitioners v. Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan, et al.
Appeal from Sixth Circuit. December 11: Petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment filed. (Response due January 14, 2021). Responses from Gov. Whitmer and City of Detroit filed on January 14.
Filed December 11th. Petition for a writ of mandamus filed. (Response due January 14, 2021) January 11th: Motion to expedite denied. January 19th: Joint Stipulation to Dismiss Appeal of Coreco Ja’Qan Pearson, et al. submitted.
Donald J. Trump, et al., Petitioners v. Joseph R. Biden, et al.
Appeal from Supreme Court of Wisconsin. December 29: Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due February 3, 2021). Motion to Expedite denied January 11. January 15: Waiver of Joseph R. Biden, et al. of right to respond submitted.
Donald J. Trump, Petitioner v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, et al.
Appeal from the Seventh Circuit. December 30: Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due February 3, 2021). January 15: Waiver of Wisconsin Elections Commission, et al. of right to respond submitted.
Thanks to reader Northland10 for obtaining selected documents from Robert Laity’s appeal to the DC District Court of Appeals of his loss in his quo warranto case against Kama D. Harris in November in the DC District Court. I have previously written about that case in this article, Birther Robert Laity files first action against Kamala Harris questioning eligibility.
The appeal was docketed on November 19th. I believe these are the key documents in the case:
Laity submitted a Statement of Issues on November 20th that was docketed on November 25th:
Laity filed a Motion to Expedite on November 23rd that was docketed on November 30th:
Beth Brinkmann entered an appearance for Vice President Elect Harris and on November 30th filed a Motion for Summary Affirmance:
Laity mailed an opposition in response to the Motion for Summary Affrimance on December 1st that was docketed on December 11th.
On December 16th Harris’ Attorney Beth Brinkmann filed a reply to Laity’s response:
Finally on January 3rd Laity filed a copy of a letter he had sent to Acting Attorney General Rosen renewing his notice of quo warranto against Kamala Harris that he had sent to AG Bill Barr in August.
I hope this all makes sense. It took a bit of work to get the documents in order since at least at the beginning Laity was mailing documents while the attorney for Vice President Elect Harris was filing electronically.
In 21 days Mike Pence will have to be the one. He will have to sit as chair of a joint session of the new Congress that counts the electoral votes to officially “kill” any hope for a second term for Donald J. Trump. Vice President Pence as have all the vice presidents who ran for either president or vice president and failed will preside over his own loss and the loss of his boss. It is largely ceremonial but is has to be done as the last Constitutionally prescribed action of the process by which we choose our president and vice president every four years.
The last time we had this identical situation was in 1993 when Vice President Dan Quayle, from Indiana just like Mike Pence, presided over the loss of his boss George H. W. Bush and himself to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, respectively. I was surprised to find there is actually video of that session.
There have also been similar joint sessions where a vice president had to preside over their own loss when vying for the top job. One of the more memorable was in 2001 when after he had lost Florida by a little over 500 votes Vice President Al Gore had to preside not only over the count but rule several times that objections raised by members of the House black caucus were out of order. For an objection to be valid it has to be submitted in writing and signed by at least one member from each body. In 2001 no senator chose to sign an objection to the Florida slate of electors.
Another session that followers of the Birther movement might recall happened on January 8, 2009 when outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney presided over the session that confirmed Barack Obama as President and Joe Biden as Vice President. Birthers claimed that Cheney failed to call for objections as required in the law. Of course there were no objections because if there were they would have been submitted beforehand in writing and signed by at least one member of each body. Of course facts never got in the way of a Birther conspiracy. The claim that Cheney was in on the fix was included in several Birther lawsuits.
I will be watching on January 6th when Pence takes the chair. We he try to pull some shenanigans? It’s not likely. There are rules and laws in place that would prevent him from going rogue. Will there be any objections? We know there are Republican members of the House who are ready to object. However yesterday Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled to his fellow Republican senators that objections would not be welcomed by the leadership.
Even if there are objections filed against electors from states won by Biden and Harris nothing happens unless a majority of each body, voting separately upholds the objection. It is not going to happen so I will not take time to speculate where it goes if an objection is upheld. A majority of Republicans in the Senate would not want to explain to millions of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, or Arizona why their votes were not counted.
Joe Biden will be certified as the President and Kamala Harris will be certified as Vice President on January 6th. Mike Pence knows that. If he wants any future in politics he knows what he has to do. The kill has to be clean and neat. Estne officium tuum exsequaris Mr. Pence.
Robert Laity from Tonawanda, NY filed a complaint against Joe Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris in which he claims she is not eligible to serve because she is not a natural born citizen. I have written about Mr. Laity before. He had the last active Birther case in the 2016 election cycle. It was a ballot challenge filed against Ted Cruz in New York.
Laity filed his complaint in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. It was docketed on September 4th and assigned to Judge Emmet Sullivan. You might have read about Judge Sullivan in the news lately. He was the Judge in the Michael Flynn perjury case and is taking on the DoJ’s attempt to drop the case against Flynn even though he pleaded guilty twice.
There are other problems with this filing. First, Laity cites no statute in his petition. He claims he is filing whatever this is under his “First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances”. Does anyone wish to guess how far that will go with this court?
The title of Laity’s complaint is United States, ex rel, Robert C. Laity v US Senator Kamala Devi Harris. This implies Laity is filing a qui tam action under the federal False Claims Act. This is similar to the tactic that Phil Berg tried against Barack Obama. Under the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act was passed during the Civil War to allow whistle-blowers to report fraud being perpetrated on the government and be rewarded with a portion of the damages recovered by the government if fraud is eventually found to have occurred. The term “whistle-blower” was not in use at the time and instead the person reporting the fraud was called a “relator” in the law.
Laity does not seek damages in his action as Phil Berg did. Berg filed his qui tam action to attempt to recover a portion of President Obama’s salary as President. His case was of course dismissed. Instead Laity is asking for the court to issue an injunction prohibiting Kamala Harris from occupying the office of Vice President this election cycle and be permanently enjoined from ever occupying the office.
Federal courts may issue injunctive relief in two forms, a temporary restraining order (TRO), or a preliminary injunction. However, the plaintiff seeking such relief must satisfy a four factor test in either case:
that he or she is likely to succeed on the merits of his claims;
that he or she is likely to suffer irreparable harm without preliminary relief;
the balance of equities between the parties support an injunction; and
the injunction is in the public interest.
Laity meets none of the four requirements for an injunction. He must meet all four. Laity’s complaint fails to address any of these requirements.
The bottom line is that Laity’s complaint is either premature as a quo warranto action or is a request for a TRO without justifications and will be dismissed even if he follows the rules for service and other rules to get that far. The case will fail as has every other case Laity and every other Birther has filed.
Updated 10/27/2020:
Yesterday Attorney Benjamin J. Razi of the law firm Covington & Burlington, LLP, filed a motion to dismiss Laity’s lawsuit on behalf of defendant Kamala Harris. Thanks to commenter “tbfreeman” for posting a link to the Defendant’s Memorandum of Law in Support of the Motion to Dismiss. Here it is
The memorandum is well written and cites several Obama era Birther cases as precedents including Kerchner v Obama, Berg v Obama, Hollander v McCain, Tisdale v Obama, and Ankeny v. Governor of State of Ind.
Mr. Razi also cites Wong Kim Ark:
The seminal case is Wong Kim Ark. There, the Supreme Court addressed whether the U.S.-born child of Chinese parents was entitled to birthright citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which provides that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States . . . .” United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 653 (1898).3 The Court answered affirmatively, explaining that, subject to exceptions inapplicable to Senator Harris, “[t]he fourteenth amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory, in the allegiance and under the protection of the country, including all children here born of resident aliens . . . .” Id. at 693 (emphasis added). The Court held that “[e]very person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States, and needs no naturalization,” regardless of the person’s parents’ citizenship or immigration status. Id. at 704.
The memorandum also addresses Laity’s misreading of Minor v Happersett:
Laity’s citation to Minor v. Happersett is inapposite. That decision, handed down 25 years before Wong Kim Ark, stated in dictum that it was unsettled whether the U.S.-born children of foreign parents are natural born citizens. 88 U.S. 162, 167 (1874). The Court definitively answered that question in Wong Kim Ark; and it reaffirmed its holding in Plyler and Rios-Pineda. Because Laity’s Complaint acknowledges that Senator Harris was born in the United States (of parents who were neither foreign diplomats nor enemy soldiers), and because that is all that is required to be a “natural born citizen,” Laity’s Complaint fails to state a claim on which relief can be granted and should be dismissed.
What a wonderful and appropriate use of the word “inapposite”! Finally Harris’ attorney asks the court to dismiss the case with prejudice:
Dismissal should be with prejudice, which is warranted “when a trial court ‘determines that the allegation of other facts consistent with the challenged pleading could not possibly cure the deficiency.’” Firestone v. Firestone, 76 F.3d 1205, 1209 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (quoting Jarrell v. United States Postal Serv., 753 F.2d 1088, 1091 (D.C. Cir. 1985)). That is the case here. There are no other allegations Laity could add to save his claim. The Complaint acknowledges that Senator Harris was born in the United States and, as discussed above, nothing further is required to be a “natural born citizen.” The Court should not permit this frivolous case to proceed any further. See Tilsdale, 2012 WL 7856823, at *1 (dismissing claim that Barack Obama was ineligible for presidency with prejudice because “allowing leave to refile would yield the same result, given the underlying premise of [plaintiff’s] claim”).
I predict this request will be fulfilled fairly quickly.
Updated 11/6/2020:
Two additional documents were filed this week. Laity filed his own “Memorandum of Law in Support of Motion in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss”. Laity finally gets around to citing some actual cases, there are citations of Minor v Happersett and the Venus of course. It’s 12 pages. He also tries to pull a fast one and quote from the 1797 translation of de Vattel and then says Vattel was translated to English in 1760. While that’s technically correct the 1760 version never used the term natural born citizen. The translation available in 1760 left the French term indigenes untranslated.
Here is Laity’s motion, which was docketed on 11/2:
The attorney for Senator Harris filed a quick reply only three pages long on 11/5:
Updated 11/11/2020:
Laity’s case was dismissed due to lack of standing:
On the August 14th edition of the NBC Nightly News Andrea Mitchell narrated a segment that covered Donald Trump who had raised questions during a press briefing about Kamala Harris’ eligibility to serve as vice president (whether she was a natural born citizen). Trump was apparently referencing a Newsweek op-ed written two days earlier by Chapman University law professor John C. Eastman in which Eastman questioned not only whether Kamala Harris was a natural born citizen but whether she was a citizen at all.
Newsweek was deluged with criticism after the Eastman op-ed was published. Originally Newsweek had failed to disclose that Eastman had run for California Attorney General in 2010, a job Kamala Harris won the same year. His biography in the article now includes that fact. Newsweek issued a half-hearted apology for jumping on the Birther train.
In Andrea Mitchell’s segment she says Harris is being challenged by “a racist birther conspiracy theory, starting with a flurry of memes and fringe websites…” and as she says that a series of blog headlines flash by including Sharon Rondeau’s Post & Email.
After several tries I was able to capture a screenshot (included above) that clearly shows an article written by Rondeau in 2018 questioning whether Harris was eligible to run for president in 2020.
I find it encouraging that the media seemed to recognize that these Birther “questions” about Kamala Harris are just more of the same racist nonsense we saw play out for nearly the entire two terms of President Barack Obama.
What’s odd is that Rondeau who reports excitedly every time someone from a government or media IP address accesses her blog, even to the point of devoting entire articles to a single visit, barely mentioned that the Post & Email was on the NBC Nightly News (albeit for less than a second).
I have previously written about the Post & Email as the last remaining Birther blog:
Former Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee for President Joe Biden named Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate last Tuesday and within hours the Harris Birthers slithered out of the woodwork from the usual places. Birthers like Sharon Rondeau, Gary Wilmott, Charles Kerchner, and Robert Laity all posted that Harris was ineligible at the Post & Email. Within two days the Birther Boob in Chief himself brought up questions about Harris’s eligibility.
I am sure that within days we we will see the first Harris Birther lawsuit filed somewhere. As we saw in 2008 and 2012 with Barack Obama and in 2016 with Ted Cruz these types of challenges on eligibility grounds are very difficult to press in the courts for various legal reasons. The courts will for the most part not allow claims of injury based on claims like “I don’t think the scary black man is eligible” to proceed past the early stages. This is why the Birthers compiled a perfect 0-226 record against President Obama over two election cycles.
I think there is a small but real possibility that the Trump campaign or Mike Pence could bring some sort of challenge against Senator Harris after she is nominated by the Democrats next week. After all, the Birther Boob in Chief is in the White House and he seems to have no problems with being identified as a racist Birther (although he finally had to admit that President Obama was born in the US and was eligible).
I for one would welcome such a challenge to end the two citizen parent nonsense once and for all. Recall that last year I explained why this legal theory is wrong and how it originated.
So relax, sit back, have the popcorn handy and enjoy the show.
‘America’s toughest sheriff’ narrowly defeated in bid for old job
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Former lawman Joe Arpaio, the nationally known Arizona sheriff who found common cause with President Donald Trump on a hard-line stance against illegal immigration, narrowly lost his bid to regain his old job, vote tallies showed on Friday.
Arpaio, 88, who billed himself as “America’s toughest sheriff,” trailed his former chief deputy, Jerry Sheridan, by 6,280 votes out of 443,056 ballots cast in Tuesday’s four-way Republican primary, according to the county elections department.
In the November general election, Sheridan will face incumbent Democrat Paul Penzone, who ousted Arpaio from office in a 2016 landslide victory.
Arpaio, damaged by a series of court judgments that cost local taxpayers more than $178 million to date, went on to lose a race two years later to fill the seat of the late Republican U.S. Senator John McCain.
A federal judge in 2017 found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt of court, ruling that the sheriff had willfully violated a 2011 injunction barring his officers from stopping and detaining Latino motorists solely on suspicion that they were in the country illegally.
The latest results showed Sheridan with 156,396 votes, compared with 150,116 for Arpaio, leaving the former long-time sheriff of Maricopa County no chance of closing the gap with just 2,385 ballots still to be counted.
A tip of the cap to reader John Woodman for letting me know that Joe Arpaio had narrowly lost his primary bid to reclaim his old job in November. Former deputy Jerry Sheridan in the Republican primary. Sheridan will take on incumbent Sheriff Paul Penzone in the November general election. Penzone handily defeated Arpaio in 2016.
It’s hard to believe almost half of the Republicans in Maricopa County who voted chose to vote for this racist pig. But on the other hand …
I suppose this means the Cold Case Posse will not be activated any time soon? I am sure all that damning evidence on President Barack Obama that Mike Zullo holds will be released any day now?
Update: I found this comment Arpaio made to the local Fox TV station in Phoenix yesterday:
“I think some people were tired of me, and they wanted somebody else,” Arpaio said. “And that’s the way it went.”
Hey Joe, I think the voters told you they were tired of you in 2016 when Paul Penzone beat you and in 2018 when you lost badly in the Republican primary race for Senate.
File photo from Reuters
Update 12/21/2020:
I have not seen much written about the general election results for sheriff of Maricopa County but Sheriff Penzone defeated Jerry Sheridan by 56% to 44% in the general election held on November 3rd. Penzone will therefore serve a second term as sheriff of Maricopa County.
Hopefully, we have heard the last from Joe Arpaio and we can close this tawdry, racist , deadly chapter in American political history.
I would like to wish all my readers a happy Independence Day 2020. It’s only a little over 4 months until the election. I urge every one of you to register and vote. There are many good places on the web to find the registration deadlines and where to vote in your state and county. I know it is a cliche to say this is the most important election in US history but this year that may well be the case.
Remember this video by Mark Gillar? He posted it on his Tea Party Power Hour YouTube channel in 2013. Folks were going to prison. Yes, people were going to prison over Barack Obama’s birth certificate. I know. It sounds absurd now. It was absurd then.
Yet, even today there are still crazy Birthers like Robert Laity, OPOVV (for One Pissed Off Vietnam Vet) and others at the Post & Email who firmly believe that Obama was never legitimate and worse. Laity believes President Obama committed treason and should be tried under the UCMJ. Here is a typical comment from Laity:
Robert Laity Tuesday, March 10, 2020 at 2:07 AM
Obama usurped the Presidency by fraud, during a time when the U.S. was at war. He swore a false oath of office to defend the constitution knowing that he is a fraud. That makes Obama both a Traitor under 18 USC and a spy under 10 USC (UCMJ 906.106)
First, as Laity has been told several times on Twitter and elsewhere, the president is not under the UCMJ. The president is a civilian. Second, President Obama was elected twice, twice the electoral college vote was certified at a joint session of Congress, and he was sworn in twice. He served his two full terms. End of story. The nonsense about his birth certificate and not being eligible is complete bullshit.
Laity also likes to fantasize that he performed a “formal citizens arrest” of Barack Obama in 2012. He has notified every attorney general since then of his “formal citizen’s arrest”. This citizens arrest is probably what earned him a visit from the Secret Service. Laity is probably a harmless nut case but he certainly doesn’t live in the real world so it is good the men in suits from the US Secret Service checked him out.
Meanwhile, we find ourselves in a real crisis. The Birther President gutted our ability to respond to an epidemic by dismantling the pandemic response team at the National Security Council. Why? Ostensibly it was a cost cutting measure but a more likely explanation is that it had been created by President Obama. Trump also failed to listen to what experts where telling him about COVID-19 months ago. Almost at every turn Trump has failed to do the right thing or has done exactly the wrong thing and that is going to make the ultimate outcome much worse.
I have observed, debated, and laughed at Birthers since late 2008. If I have learned one thing it is that their stupidity, hatred and racism has no bounds. No amount of evidence was ever going to convince them that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, none of his documents were forged, and he was rightfully elected and served two terms admirably.
It is no surprise that they worship the Birther in the Oval Office now despite ample evidence that he lies, cheats, and is completely unequipped to handle possibly the greatest crisis to hit the country since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Instead these mental midgets would rather waste their time talking about how Carl Gallups did Mike Zullo wrong or there is something wrong with Barack Obama’s Selective Service registration card.
