WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court sealed President Donald Trump’s defeat late Friday, soundly rejecting a demand from Texas to nullify 10.4 million votes in four states that put President-elect Joe Biden over the top in last month’s election.
Seventeen states that Trump carried had backed Texas’ request, while 25 others, including two where Trump was victorious, had filed motions opposing the idea that one state can meddle in another’s elections.
The ruling lifts the biggest cloud of uncertainty ahead of Monday’s Electoral College vote. Biden won by a decisive 306-232 margin and also collected 7 million more votes than Trump nationwide.
The court ruled 7-2 that Texas lacked standing to challenge election procedures in other states — a blow both for Trump and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who co-chaired “Lawyers for Trump” during the campaign and filed the long-shot lawsuit that election law experts viewed as an affront to democracy.
“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,” the court wrote in a brief unsigned ruling.
Despite the brevity and legalese, the ruling had enormous implications. The case was almost certainly Trump’s last shot for the court to deliver an election he’d failed to secure at the ballot box.
Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented on grounds that since only the Supreme Court is empowered to handle controversies between states, the court had no option but to hear the case.
They were careful not to say whether they believed it had merit, and Alito wrote that he “would not grant other relief,” a phrase some constitutional scholars took to mean that even the dissenters wouldn’t have granted the remedy Texas sought, which would have been nothing short of unprecedented. Texas wanted the court to overrule the majorities in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin that awarded Biden 62 electoral votes, allowing legislatures in those states — all controlled by Republicans — to choose electors instead.
Trump and a half dozen other states he won last month had asked permission to join Texas’ lawsuit.
None of the three justices the president named to the court sided with him.
“Democracy has prevailed. Again,” tweeted Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“Our nation’s highest court saw through this seditious abuse of our electoral process,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. “This swift denial should make anyone contemplating further attacks on our election think twice.”
Time was short. The Electoral College meets today, Dec. 14, after presidential elections. Biden’s electoral vote margin over Trump is the same that Trump notched on Election Night four years ago and deemed a landslide.
The only remaining formality will come on Jan. 6, when Congress votes on whether to accept the Electoral College vote.
Paxton filed the lawsuit late Monday. The court gave the four states whose elections Texas wanted to overturn until Thursday to reply. Each filed a scathing rebuttal.
