‘New California State’ files brain-rotting amicus brief in Texas election lawsuit
New California #NewCalifornia
In this Nov. 5, 2020, file photo, the Supreme Court in Washington.
The latest states to file an amicus brief in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s longshot attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election are “New California State” and “New Nevada State.”
“New California State” appears to be related to the group who declared independence from the rest of the state in January 2018, but of course did not actually become a new state by doing so. Both “New California” and “New Nevada” are represented by Robert E. Thomas III, who filed the brief Friday.
The main lawsuit itself — which has been joined by 17 other Republican attorneys general across the country and 106 House Republicans — has been described as “frivolous,” “ridiculous” and “not going to go anywhere” by legal experts both liberal and conservative alike, but the “New California” brief may be even worse.
In addition to parroting the Texas lawsuit’s numerous disproven allegations of widespread voter fraud that have been rejected in courts around the country, the “New California” brief repeatedly misspells the name of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, referring to him as “Newsome” throughout.
The “New California” brief also never actually establishes how these brand new states exist, stating only, “Part of the reason for the formation of New California State and New Nevada Sate is to stop the lawless actions of Governors Newsome (California) and Sisolak (Nevada).”
Several legal experts on Twitter mocked the brief.
“Welp, we now have states that don’t even *exist* filing amicus briefs in #SCOTUS in Texas’s overturn-the-election suit,” tweeted University of Texas Law School professor Steve Vladeck. “I think we’ve officially jumped the Kraken.”
“A lot of lawyers should face court sanctions for some of the filings in the courts seeking to overturn the result of the election,” wrote UC Irvine’s Rick Hasen. “And no, not just the lawyers for New California and New Nevada.”
For those unsure why the Texas case is extremely unlikely to go anywhere, or for those who don’t buy the academic consensus, here’s the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, a conservative legal expert and supporter of President Donald Trump during the Mueller probe and the Ukraine-related impeachment proceedings.
“The Court did not grant review of a case from Pennsylvania that it should have taken, involving a narrow, critical issue of constitutional law pertaining to elections, when that issue was raised by parties in the commonwealth who were directly affected,” he writes. “The justices are not going to have the slightest interest in entertaining a sprawling lawsuit brought by an unaffected third-party state — one that, if Texas got its way, would forevermore thrust the Supreme Court into the thick of electoral politics.”
He continues, “In point of fact, every claim raised in Texas’s complaint has already been rejected by other courts.” He concludes, “There is … no way the Supreme Court is going to entertain Texas’s lawsuit. There is also no way, I suspect, that Paxton doesn’t know that.”