GOP state lawmakers appeal to SCOTUS to challenge Biden's 'usurpations' of their power to run elections
A group of Pennsylvania state legislators have taken their fight for the right to sue President Biden over his election executive order (EO) to the Supreme Court.
A group of 27 state lawmakers are asking the high court to give them standing in a case challenging Biden’s March 2021 Executive Order 14019 on "promoting access to voting," after a lower court ruled that they lacked standing, according to a petition for writ of certiorari that was filed on Tuesday and shared with Fox News Digital.
The group of Republicans filed the lawsuit challenging the EO, arguing that it is essentially an executive get-out-the-vote effort targeting key demographics to benefit the president’s political party and own re-election, which they argue is unconstitutional with Congress having never enacted a law that grants such an action from the Oval Office.
In their petition filed Tuesday, they asked the court to weigh in, saying that, for the 2024 election, they cannot "do their part" in suing to stop "federal and state executive usurpations of Pennsylvania state law, pursuant to the Elections Clause and Electors Clause, unless the Court does its part and declares individual state legislator standing in this case."
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The Elections Clause states that the "times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof."
The Electors Clause says that "each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."
"As the Court has stated, when cases involve federal elections, it ‘heightens the need for review' as [e]lections are ‘of the most fundamental significance under our constitutional structure," the petition states.
Biden’s Executive Order 14019 directed "executive departments and agencies" to "partner with State, local, Tribal, and territorial election officials to protect and promote the exercise of the right to vote, eliminate discrimination and other barriers to voting, and expand access to voter registration and accurate election information."
Erick Kaardal, attorney for the Key Stone State lawmakers, argued in legal filings that the executive order — among other things — directed the Department of Health and Human Services to facilitate voter registrations; the Department of Housing and Urban Development to instruct more than 3,000 public housing authorities to facilitate registration drives in those units; the Department of Education to push state schools to register students; and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to issue letters to state agencies that administer SNAP and WIC programs, instructing them to carry out voter-registration activities with federal funds.
"Each individual legislator has a right to protect ‘their constitutional duty to craft the rules governing federal elections,’" the petition states. "Members of the executive branch should not be permitted to strip state legislators of their Constitutional rights — representative rights of the people."
That stripping of constitutional rights refers to the legislator’s claim that Biden’s executive order denies them their "right to oversee and participate in making legislative decisions regulating federal elections," which they say is granted to them in the Constitution.
The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), who filed an amicus brief in the case in lower court, said that "this is the most consequential legal issue in the country."
"The outcome of this case could determine who holds the White House," Stewart Whitson, senior director of federal affairs at FGA, told Fox News Digital.
The Supreme Court receives roughly 8,000 petitions a year and grants roughly 80 of those.
The Justice Department and White House did not immediately return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.