A United States District Court today handed Trump yet another decisive loss. You can read the full decision HERE. The introduction to the Judge Brann’s decision (an Obama appointee but longtime Republican and Federalist Society member) makes clear the failures of Team Giuliani.
Plaintiffs ask this Court to disenfranchise almost seven million voters. This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more
The court then discusses why Plaintiffs do not have standing. Basically, Plaintiffs fail to allege that Defendants' conduct denied them of their rights to vote. Nor could they allege that based on the accepted facts of the case.
From there the court moved on to the equal protection arguments so beloved by Trumper supporters. Trump’s argument was that the state allowed all counties to cure some defective mail in ballots, but not all counties chose to, just those in Biden dominated counties (as alleged by Plaintiffs).
Even if Plaintiffs had standing, they fail to state an equal-protection claim . . .
Defendant Counties, by implementing a notice-and-cure procedure, have in fact lifted a burden on the right to vote, even if only for those who live in those counties. Expanding the right to vote for some residents of a state does not burden the rights of others. And Plaintiffs’ claim cannot stand to the extent that it complains that “the state is not imposing a restriction on someone else’s right to vote.” . . .
Individual Plaintiffs’ claims fail because it is perfectly rational for a state to provide counties discretion to notify voters that they may cure procedurally defective mail-in ballots. Though states may not discriminatorily sanction procedures that are likely to burden some persons’ right to vote more than others, they need not expand the right to vote in perfect uniformity.
All Plaintiffs have alleged is that Secretary Boockvar allowed counties to choose whether or not they wished to use the notice-and-cure procedure. No county was forced to adopt notice-and-cure; each county made a choice to do so, or not. Because it is not irrational or arbitrary for a state to allow counties to expand the right to vote if they so choose, Individual Plaintiffs fail to state an equal-protection claim.
The court then went even further, it assumed that Plaintiffs did sufficiently allege equal protection violations and stated that even assuming that the remedy sought could not be granted by the court. Rather than seeking that millions of legally cast votes not be counted, Plaintiffs should have sought to allow their votes to be cured and counted (the problem for Team Trump was that such votes were too few to change the result).
Moreover, even if they could state a valid claim, the Court could not grant Plaintiffs the relief they seek . . . assuming that they can establish that their right to vote has been denied, which they cannot, Plaintiffs seek to remedy the denial of their votes by invalidating the votes of millions of others. Rather than requesting that their votes be counted, they seek to discredit scores of other votes, but only for one race. This is simply not how the Constitution works . . .
Here, leveling up to address the alleged cancellation of Plaintiffs’ votes would be easy; the simple answer is that their votes would be counted. But Plaintiffs do not ask to level up. Rather, they seek to level down, and in doing so, they ask the Court to violate the rights of over 6.8 million Americans. It is not in the power of this Court to violate the Constitution.
Returning to the equal protection issue and the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore:
Plaintiffs are not challenging any court action as a violation of equal protection, and they do not allege that Secretary Boockvar’s guidance differed from county to county, or that Secretary Boockvar told some counties to cure ballots and others not to. That some counties may have chosen to implement the guidance (or not), or to implement it differently, does not constitute an equal-protection violation. “[M]any courts that have recognized that counties may, consistent with equal protection, employ entirely different election . . . Requiring that every single county administer elections in exactly the same way would impose untenable burdens on counties, whether because of population, resources, or a myriad of other reasonable considerations.
To summarize the court strained to examine every inference favorable to defendant and could find none.
- Plaintiffs lack standing, and so they lose.
- Even assuming Plaintiffs have standing, they do not adequately allege an equal protection clause violation, and so Plaintiffs lose.
- Even assuming Plaintiff adequately allege an equal protection clause violation, the court might could grant a remedy ordering counting the handful of Plaintiffs’ votes not cured to be counted, but the court cannot grant a remedy disenfranchising millions of other voters, and so Plaintiffs lose.
Notably, the judge Ruled on what lawyers call a Rule 12(b)(6) motion for “failure to state an action for which the court may grant relief.” At this stage the judge is required to give great deference to the Plaintiffs’ pleadings, and assume all facts alleged by the Plaintiff are true. The judge did more than that, and still Plaintiffs lose.