The Supreme Court dismissed Texas’s lawsuit against four battleground states on Friday with a simple explanation: Texas does not have legal standing to sue another state just because it disagrees with the way that state conducted its election.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its election,” the Supreme Court explained, dismissing all other pending motions related to the lawsuit as moot.
This was the right (and very predictable) decision. Texas may have brought up legitimate concerns about mail-in voting and the way in which Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia conducted their elections. But that does not mean Texas can then take those states to court.
The proper forum for this dispute is the political process at both the state and federal levels because that is where election laws are decided.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued a brief statement saying they believed the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction technically compelled them to at least let the case be filed. But the justices noted that they would not grant any other relief, which means they would not have issued any temporary injunctions (for example, stopping the Electoral College from meeting on Monday), to keep the case alive while they decided its merits. And on the merits, Alito and Thomas made it clear they offered no opinion.
So, this was not a 7-2 decision. It was 9-0, with the entire bench unanimously agreeing that Texas’s lawsuit would not hold up.
In doing so, the Supreme Court upheld two important principles: federalism and the separation of powers. Federalism, because this rejection affirmed that states have the right to conduct their elections as they see fit without the interference of others. The separation of powers, because its denial made certain that the judiciary will not wade into the thick of electoral politics unless absolutely necessary.
In a normal era, one would expect Republicans to be pleased that the Supreme Court is sticking to its constitutional role. But this is not a normal time, and President Trump is not a normal person. But now, at least, it looks like Trump’s time is coming to an end.
