Justice Brett Kavanaugh
Brett Michael Kavanaugh Media circles carts for conspiracy theorist Neera Tanden The January 6 case to end Senate filibuster Laurence Tribe: Justice Thomas is out of action in 2020 election MORE stunned conservatives this week when he apparently cast the casting vote that prevented the Supreme Court from instituting pro-Trump election proceedings.
Kavanaugh’s apparent split with the court’s three most staunch conservatives: judges Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas Laurence Tribe: Justice Thomas is out of action in 2020 election Supreme Court won’t overhaul Pennsylvania GOP election procedures A powerful tool to stand up to the Supreme Court – if Democrats use it right MORE Samuel Alito
Samuel Alito Laurence Tribe: Justice Thomas Out of Order in 2020 Supreme Court Won’t Overhaul Pennsylvania GOP Election Procedures A Powerful Tool to Stand Up Against the Supreme Court – If Democrats Use It Right MORE and Neil Gorsuch
Neil Gorsuch The Jan. 6 case to end Senate filibuster Laurence Tribe: Justice Thomas is out of action in 2020 election McConnell Backs Garland for Attorney General MORE – seemed to surprise his colleagues and angered some of the political right who saw the move as an act of treason.
Thomas said in a dissenting opinion that he was “confused” by the court’s reluctance to address the disputes, as four judges – including Kavanaugh – had expressed their opinion in late October that the pro-Trump challengers were likely to be in higher would win an appeal.
“You may wonder what this Court is waiting for. We have not been able to resolve this dispute before the election and thus provide clear rules, ”Thomas wrote in what some analysts saw as a thinly disguised swipe at Kavanaugh. “Now we again fail to set clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave electoral law hidden behind a shroud of doubt is mind-boggling. “
Alito and Gorsuch wrote separate contradictions on the court’s denial on Monday, but made it clear they agreed with Thomas. The dissenting judges said the disputes would not have distorted the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
As usual, the judges did not give the public a complete picture of how they voted on the petitions, or their reasoning. But the disagreements of Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch strongly suggested that Kavanaugh was losing his appetite to deal with the election-related disputes.
If so, Kavanaugh’s vote this week marked a change from his previous stance. In the run-up to the November election, he joined Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, opting for the Republicans of Pennsylvania in their emergency attempt to roll back voter accommodation that Trump claimed were illegal.
Anthony Sanders of the libertarian Institute for Justice, a law firm, said the conservative judges’ dissent focused on Kavanaugh’s apparent flip-flop.
“Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch seem quite ‘confused’ and ‘baffled’ at Justice Kavanaugh today,” Sanders wrote on Twitter. “He voted with them to take a case on the scope of the ‘legislative clause’ last fall, but is strangely absent from awarding a certificate in the Pennsylvania case.”
The Wall Street Journal editors also directly exclaimed Kavanaugh in an article accusing the court of not ending what it described as “election anarchy.”
[W]this is where Judge Brett Kavanaugh strayed, since he was the fourth round of voting in October? wrote the editorial.
In their petition, the Pennsylvania Republicans argued that the U.S. Constitution only allows the state legislature about elections in the Keystone State. If that view were embraced by the judges, it would mean that pandemic-era adjustments, such as expanded postal voting, introduced by the Secretary of State, were unconstitutional.
Kavanaugh seemed sympathetic to that argument back in October. After Justice’s death Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg McConnell Backs Garland For Attorney General A Powerful Tool To Take On The Supreme Court – If Democrats Use It Well Fauci Says He Was Nervous About Catching COVID-19 In Trump White House MORE, Kavanaugh joined the three conservative court stalwarts in the Pennsylvania GOP side to stop the new voting rules. The court’s 4-4 draw left the property intact until the November 6 elections.
Some see a link between Kavanaugh’s change of heart on Monday and the January 6 uprising at the Capitol, fueled by Trump’s election misinformation.
Julie Kelly, a fierce Trump defender and self-described as an ‘agitator’, accused Kavanaugh, a Trump-appointed person, of cowardice under pressure from the Democrats and the news media.
“One can only assume that since Kavanaugh changed his position in Pennsylvania before the election, he has been receiving threats to promote a ‘big lie’ about electoral fraud,” Kelly wrote in the hard-right publication American Greatness.
Rick Hasen, an expert on election law and law professor at the University of California Irvine, made two guesses as to why the court had not heard the election procedures. Either the judges lost interest in the disputes because they now disagree, he said, or the court stayed away because the Trump cases are considered “somewhat radioactive.”
Given former President Trump
Donald Trump Mention Praises South Dakota Coronavirus Response, Blocks Lockdowns In CPAC Speech On The Trail: Cuomo and Newsom – A Story From Two Controversial Governors McCarthy: ‘I’d Bet My House’ GOP Takes Lower Room Back in 2022 MOREThe ongoing false statements that the election had been stolen would turn the case into a new means of claiming the election results to be illegal, ”Hasen wrote on the Election Law Blog. “It would put the court back in the spotlight on an issue the judges repeatedly showed they wanted to avoid.”
After Trump’s election defeat, he and his allies amassed a hopeless record in court as they tried to undermine President Biden
Joe BidenNoem Praises South Dakota Coronavirus Response, Blocks Lockdowns In CPAC Speech On The Trail: Cuomo and Newsom – A Story From Two Controversial Governors Biden Celebrates Vaccine Approval But Warns ‘Could Reverse Current Improvement’win by court cases after the election. The Supreme Court has so far declined to hear about a dozen such cases.
In total, the court dismissed appeals on Monday in eight election-related lawsuits filed by Trump or his allies. Many of the lawsuits urged the judges to clarify the legal gray area as to which branch of the state government has the authority to conduct elections.
However, the court has not fully released its role of post-election lawsuits. The judges on Friday are scheduled to discuss a Trump challenge to Wisconsin’s postal voting policy, and Kavanaugh could be under pressure to hear the matter again.