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Standing: If A violated the rights of B, person C watching it cannot sue on A's behalf. The Texas standing was always going to be an issue, yes. What right doe

Standing: If A violated the rights of B, person C watching it cannot sue on A's behalf. The Texas standing was always going to be an issue, yes. What right does Texas have to make PA enforce their own laws? PA can choose not to enforce their laws if they want. But Texas, and six other states, claimed this would have diluted their own votes for the Federal Government. I do not believe the standing issue here, because there is literally no other court for Texas to sue in. This wasn't really an issue of standing. It was an issue of cowardice.

jcranmer 6y ago
> claimed this would have diluted their own votes for the Federal Government. Texas gets x votes of the 538 electoral votes. It gets that no matter how Pennsylvania chooses its electors; the number of electoral votes is fixed as a matter of reckoning by the census. So how can Texas's electoral votes possibly be diluted? It should also be noted that the legal theory of "vote dilution" is applied to a very narrow set of cases where one can bring suit, essentially only gerrymandering cases. It has never, to my knowledge, been applied to a case where it was claimed that an invalid or fraudulent vote causes vote dilution for everyone who casts their votes properly. I actually believe a few courts have considered that claim and expressly denied that claim, although that has not made it to the Supreme Court before. > there is literally no other court for Texas to sue in. This wasn't really an issue of standing. You've not-so-cleverly dodged the issue I brought up: the law does not give Texas any possible legal standing to sue Pennsylvania. Period. Full-stop. End-of-question. To demand that the court hear Texas's plea is to demand that the court violate the rule of the law. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that to have standing, you have to demonstrate a particular injury, which cannot be a generalized grievance. Texas did not, and cannot, demonstrate any injury. Hell, Texas compounds its error by complaining about other states undertaking the same actions it took itself (as the DC-et-al brief so kindly points out [1]), which is compounding the bad faith with which it filed its brief. Texas had no injury. It tried to BS its way to one, and its BS was called out as such in all the respondent brief, and Texas's reply brief basically amounted to "nuh-uh" without really attacking the gravamen of any reply. I agree with Tom Goldstein here that SCOTUS should have abandoned its practice of dismissing this kind of case with a one-sentence per curiam order and actually release the kind of dismissal opinion that is routine in all other courts laying out just why the case was never going to be heard. Texas doesn't have a right to sue PA for not following its own laws. That right is granted only to PA residents--and some residents did sue the PA government in this regard on the law in question, and that lawsuit already failed by the time Texas filed its suit, a fact you again choose to ignore. [1] Yes, I read every single brief in that case. So I know what the actual gravamen of Texas's claims were, and it was very clear from the first brief that Texas filed that the case was going to be dismissed with no dissent, as it was [2]. I may not be a lawyer, but what's going on here isn't exactly delving very deep into the weeds of specialized law: this is basic, Law 101 standing stuff. [2] Thomas and Alito noted that they dissented only insofar as they think the pseudo-cert motion for intra-state disputes must be heard. They would have still dismissed the case for the same reason as the other 7 justices, and they commented as much. This dissenting on grounds of pseudo-cert process not being constitutional was also 100% predicted, with the only question being if Barrett would agree with them here (she did not).
tptacek 6y ago
That is not a good description of standing. Standing: because the federal courts would otherwise be panels of life-tenured unelected philosopher-kings, in order to bring a matter before them, you must personally have suffered an injury that it is within the court's legal power to redress. Every single justice on the Supreme Court, 6 of whom are conservative, rejected the Texas argument (Alito and Thomas share an idiosyncratic belief that all "original jurisdiction" cases [those between states] have to be heard, regardless of how stupid, and so would have forwarded the case but not granted relief). The case made it to the court and failed 9-0.

jcranmer 6y ago

> claimed this would have diluted their own votes for the Federal Government. Texas gets x votes of the 538 electoral votes. It gets that no matter how Pennsylvania chooses its electors; the number of electoral votes is fixed as a matter of reckoning by the census. So how can Texas's electoral votes possibly be diluted? It should also be noted that the legal theory of "vote dilution" is applied to a very narrow set of cases where one can bring suit, essentially only gerrymandering cases. It has never, to my knowledge, been applied to a case where it was claimed that an invalid or fraudulent vote causes vote dilution for everyone who casts their votes properly. I actually believe a few courts have considered that claim and expressly denied that claim, although that has not made it to the Supreme Court before. > there is literally no other court for Texas to sue in. This wasn't really an issue of standing. You've not-so-cleverly dodged the issue I brought up: the law does not give Texas any possible legal standing to sue Pennsylvania. Period. Full-stop. End-of-question. To demand that the court hear Texas's plea is to demand that the court violate the rule of the law. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that to have standing, you have to demonstrate a particular injury, which cannot be a generalized grievance. Texas did not, and cannot, demonstrate any injury. Hell, Texas compounds its error by complaining about other states undertaking the same actions it took itself (as the DC-et-al brief so kindly points out [1]), which is compounding the bad faith with which it filed its brief. Texas had no injury. It tried to BS its way to one, and its BS was called out as such in all the respondent brief, and Texas's reply brief basically amounted to "nuh-uh" without really attacking the gravamen of any reply. I agree with Tom Goldstein here that SCOTUS should have abandoned its practice of dismissing this kind of case with a one-sentence per curiam order and actually release the kind of dismissal opinion that is routine in all other courts laying out just why the case was never going to be heard. Texas doesn't have a right to sue PA for not following its own laws. That right is granted only to PA residents--and some residents did sue the PA government in this regard on the law in question, and that lawsuit already failed by the time Texas filed its suit, a fact you again choose to ignore. [1] Yes, I read every single brief in that case. So I know what the actual gravamen of Texas's claims were, and it was very clear from the first brief that Texas filed that the case was going to be dismissed with no dissent, as it was [2]. I may not be a lawyer, but what's going on here isn't exactly delving very deep into the weeds of specialized law: this is basic, Law 101 standing stuff. [2] Thomas and Alito noted that they dissented only insofar as they think the pseudo-cert motion for intra-state disputes must be heard. They would have still dismissed the case for the same reason as the other 7 justices, and they commented as much. This dissenting on grounds of pseudo-cert process not being constitutional was also 100% predicted, with the only question being if Barrett would agree with them here (she did not).

tptacek 6y ago

That is not a good description of standing. Standing: because the federal courts would otherwise be panels of life-tenured unelected philosopher-kings, in order to bring a matter before them, you must personally have suffered an injury that it is within the court's legal power to redress. Every single justice on the Supreme Court, 6 of whom are conservative, rejected the Texas argument (Alito and Thomas share an idiosyncratic belief that all "original jurisdiction" cases [those between states] have to be heard, regardless of how stupid, and so would have forwarded the case but not granted relief). The case made it to the court and failed 9-0.