“Corporate lobbyists eye new lawsuits after Supreme Court limits federal power”

legislation and legislatures, lobbying, Supreme Court

WaPo:

Mere hours after the Supreme Court sharply curbed the power of federal agencies, conservatives and corporate lobbyists began plotting how to harness the favorable ruling in a redoubled quest to whittle down climate, finance, health, labor and technology regulations in Washington.

The early strategizing underscored the magnitude of the justices’ landmark decision, which rattled the nation’s capital and now appears poised to touch off years of lawsuits that could redefine the U.S. government’s role in modern American life.

The legal bombshell arrived Friday, when the six conservatives on the Supreme Court invalidated a decades-old legal precedent that federal judges should defer to regulatory agencies in cases where the law is ambiguous or Congress fails to specify its intentions. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. described the framework as “unworkable,” at one point arguing in his opinion that it “prevents judges from judging.”

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“Paid operatives linked to a GOP firm are helping Cornel West in Arizona”

ballot access, chicanery, third parties

NBC News:

A dozen paid operatives registered with Arizona’s secretary of state on Sunday to collect signatures on behalf of left-wing presidential candidate Cornel West, listing their employer as a Republican-leaning firm that recently worked for GOP House candidate Blake Masters.

Arizona, unlike most states, requires paid or out-of-state petition-gatherers to register with the state. On their public registrations, some of circulators working to help West get on the ballot in Arizona struggled to spell his name, listing it as “Carnel west” or “Cornelle West.”

All checked boxes indicating they are out of state and that they are being paid. All listed Wells Marketing LLC — or some variation, with a few misspellings — as the company they are working for.

It’s unclear who is paying them. Wells Marketing did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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“The Basis for Election Exceptionalism in Justiciability and Related Doctrines: ‘Constitutional Compensation’ in Light of Purcell”

court decisions, Supreme Court

Vik Amar and Evan Caminker have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, University of Illinois L. Rev.). Here is the abstract:

Pursuant to the so-called Purcell doctrine, lower federal courts (and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court itself) are supposed to refrain from issuing remedies that would alter the rules for election administration in the runup to Election Day.  Whatever may be invoked to explain or support the instincts behind the Purcell rule (e.g., concerns about voter confusion, candidate and campaign expectations, smooth operation of election logistics, etc.), one tremendously problematic entailment of Purcell is that elections are held (and candidates are elected and policies are determined) under (often substantial) legal clouds.  Even if those clouds can be removed for future election cycles (an outcome itself not always easy under current justiciability rules), the fact remains that, because of Purcell, binding elections (with momentous consequences) take place even when serious doubt exists about the legality of the contests under federal statutes and the Constitution.  Because of these deleterious consequences (and even assuming the Purcell doctrine makes some sense or in any event is entrenched at the Court), we seek, making use of “compensation” theory, to identify ways that justiciability doctrines (e.g., mootness, first- and third-party standing, ripeness, vagueness and overbreadth) and related constraints on access to federal fora can and should be overtly modified to offset Purcell’s undesirable effects, and facilitate earlier and easier federal adjudication and remediation in election-related challenges.  It turns out the foundations of such an election exceptionalism as regards access to federal courts has been partially (if inconsistently and haphazardly) laid by the Supreme Court, but the Court has never meaningfully tried to tie the various foundation beams together in a structurally sound and coherent way, much less describe and explain what the doctrinal edifice should look like and why.  That is what we seek to do in this Article.

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“Republicans are turning Biden’s voter registration order into a partisan flash point”

NVRA (motor voter), The Voting Wars, voter registration

Hansi Lo Wang for NPR:

In these final months before this fall’s election, Republican officials are ramping up attacks on a three-year-old executive order President Biden issued to try to get more eligible voters signed up to cast ballots.

The order calls for federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in ways that are “consistent with applicable law.” Many election experts see the effort as a worthwhile attempt to take advantage of the regular interactions eligible voters have with the government and address long-standing barriers to the ballot, including those facing people of color, those with disabilities, those in federal custody and those serving overseas in the U.S. military.

“It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the 2021 order says.

But now, as the Democratic president faces reelection, his order has sparked growing pushback from the right, most recently congressional subpoenas to agency directors from the GOP-controlled House Administration Committee and an attempt by a group of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania to get the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a dismissed lawsuit over the order.

Backed with no substantial evidence, GOP lawmakers and state election officials, along with right-wing activists, have launched a barrage of claims that the Biden administration is using this order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections, garner more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections.

“This Executive Order is another attempt by the Biden Administration to tilt the scales ahead of 2024,” Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the House Administration Committee, said this month in a press release referencing “Bidenbucks,” what has become shorthand for unsubstantiated allegations that the administration is misusing federal tax dollars to benefit Biden’s reelection campaign.

What the order has actually done, however, has not fully satisfied its supporters.

A few federal agencies have started new partnerships with states to help with voter registration, and others have released guides, mailers and updated websites. But it’s unclear how many new voter registration applications the order has yielded so far.

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