Mark Meadows' case shows GOP's pattern of undermining state rights: analyst
The efforts Mark Meadows and others criminally charged alongside Donald Trump are going through to move their Georgia cases to federal court show a recent pattern in Republican attempts to undermine the states' rights, a legal analyst said Saturday.
The GOP has long been known for championing states' rights, but the Meadows' removal attempt is the second case in recent memory in which Republicans attempted to undermine that principle, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said. The first, she said, is Moore v. Harper, which concerns the ability of state courts to enforce state constitutions and state laws in elections, according to reports.
"It struck me tonight that Meadows’s removal motions (and those of his co-defendants) is the second major conservative effort this year to ice out state courts from their role in election-related disputes. The first? Moore v. Harper, of course," Rubin wrote.
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Rubin then explained:
"That case — in which the Supreme Court could have embraced but did not endorse the independent state legislature doctrine — nonetheless reaffirms the power of states to regulate and administer elections," Rubin wrote. "And in his opinion rejecting removal for Meadows, perhaps the most clever thing Judge Jones does is cite Moore v. Harper for the proposition that a state’s broad power over elections, including to prevent 'fraud and corrupt practices,' comes from our *federal* constitution."
The inclusion of that prior case shows that "Judge Jones has to use the fruits of one attempt to subvert state courts’ authority to reject another," which is "especially bizarre given the conservative legal movement’s historical obsession with states’ rights," according to Rubin.
Rubin added that the judge overseeing the Meadows action "will consider the specific facts applicable to the other defendants demanding removal—but his description of what the law requires under their old, neglected friend federalism bodes terribly for each of them."