Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has volunteered to argue a lawsuit brought by some Pennsylvania Republicans challenging President Donald Trump's election loss, and one legal scholar was appalled.
The Texas Republican said he would be willing to challenge the election results in oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court if the justices agreed to take up a lawsuit filed by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), congressional candidate Sean Parnell and Pennsylvania state representative candidate Wanda Logan, and law professor Kimberly Wehle ripped Cruz in a column for The Bulwark.
"Whew! Now that Cruz is on the constitutional job, we can finally relax," writes Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and former assistant U.S. attorney. "The certified vote counts don’t resolve anything — only five unelected individuals on the U.S. Supreme Court can resolve the election!"
The lawsuit claims the Republican-led Pennsylvania legislature violated the federal Constitution by expanding mail-in voting because state lawmakers didn't have the authority to do so under their state constitution.
The GOP lawsuit also claims the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights when it dismissed their case, and as relief they're asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss out all 6.9 million absentee ballots cast in the state.
"In other words, because these three candidates claim that their individual constitutional rights were violated, they argue that the Pennsylvania legislature should ignore the 6.9 million votes and unilaterally choose Pennsylvania’s electors in their stead," Wehle writes. "For Trump, of course."
The U.S. Constitution plainly grants state legislatures the authority to decide election laws, even for president, and Wehle called out Cruz as a hypocrite for considering a challenge to that constitutional law.
"Cruz — the strict constructionist — is eager to stand before the U.S. Supreme Court to argue that the Pennsylvania legislature had no power to allow universal mail-in voting, but does have the power to throw out every single vote cast in Pennsylvania and impose its own political will on the citizens of Pennsylvania, who chose Joe Biden for president by a nearly 82,000-vote margin over Donald Trump," Wehle writes.
