If Trump&#39;s legal challenges to the 2020 elections are so bad, why haven&#39;t the courts ruled them as frivolous? (Not sure if this should be on the Law.SE) Per title. Most of the news coverage I've seen have said the challenges are bad, such as this recent one on the result of a challenge in Pennsylvania. &quot;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,&quot; he wrote. &quot;Instead, this court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations ... unsupported by evidence. Second example: Russell J. Ramsland Jr., a cybersecurity worker and an expert witness in the case, filed an affidavit Wednesday claiming that his company had uncovered evidence of inconsistencies in electronic voting machines. But the inconsistencies he claimed to identify were in districts in Michigan, not Georgia. The affidavit also listed a number of towns and counties in which Ramsland’s analysis ostensibly showed that the number of votes cast exceeded the number of eligible voters. But most, if not all, of the places Ramsland listed appeared to be townships and counties in Minnesota, not Michigan. Taken at face value this would imply that the legal cases are really bad, effectively wasting the courts' time. That in turn implies that the judges would've handed down a frivolous litigation judgement with associated penalties for the plaintiffs. But if that has happened, I've not seen it reported in the media. Why? A first guess is that there is no law against frivolous litigation in the US, but Wikipedia seems to indicate that's not the case.
First, while most US court systems do have rules against frivolous lawsuits, most judges are loathed to employ them because the punishment is that the vexatious litigant would be denied the use of courts for when they do actually have a case of merit. Declaring someone a vexatious litigant also does not 100% block someone from filing suits. Normally they can file if a judge or officer of the court (i.e. a lawyer) signs off on the case. Since most lawyers won't touch the kind of cases that vexatious litigants tend to file, the litigant tends to be representing themselves pro se (Lawyers taking these types of cases tend to get disbarred quite quickly as they are effectively taking money from clients who they ought to know don't have a snowball's chance in hell... with global warming in full effect... in an El Nino year). Furthermore, being declared a vexatious litigant in one state does not ban you from filing in another state and most election cases at the time of writing have yet to reach the Federal Level (and even then, such a declaration is not a nationwide ban. It only bans the litigant in federal courts. All 50 states have to separately ban the litigant in their own legal system). Secondly, while there are a number of cases over the past election that were dismissed, only a handful were filed by Trump's legal team. Many were filed by down-ballot Republicans or even voting citizens in many cases who's desired outcome just happens to align with Trump's desired outcomes. While most have been dismissed, it's wrong to say they were filed by Trump or his legal team. The right to litigate election results is quite broad as to who has the standing to file these cases and it varies from state to state. Finally, not all cases dismissed are dismissed &quot;with prejudice&quot; which means that while the case in it's current state is not acceptable for a court to hear, it's not without merit to be heard once the deficiencies are amended. As an example, one early case filed and dismissed was seeking an injunction to stop the vote-counting until the court could rule on the matter of how well ballot observers could actually &quot;observe&quot; the ballots being counted. However, between the time the case was filed and the judge heard the case, the ballots were all counted, which meant that the relief sought by the plaintiff (i.e. Trump) was physically impossible to grant BUT the legal question of whether ballot observers were allowed to properly observe the counting is still valid, so it was dismissed &quot;Without Prejudice&quot; which means the plaintiff could amend the case and refile as the relief needed to be changed. Essentially the judge is willing to at least hear the arguments but cannot grant the relief for damages sought. In the U.S., Judges cannot hear cases that are moot, even if there is a valid argument to be made (to give a criminal angle to this, yes, a judge should hear the evidence that a man committed mass murder... but only if that accused mass murderer is still alive to be punished... if he's dead there's really nothing the Judge can do.).
Yes, it's actally happened. Several outfits have filed cases by the hundreds, and they were even literally photocopies. And it works rather well, until one victim stands up for what's right - and then the house of cards comes tumbling down. Molski For instance, due to a minor ADA issue (toilet paper roll 2&quot; too low etc.) poor Jarek Molski was injured using the bathroom... in hundreds of restaurants, many on the same day, and hundreds in the same week. On one hand, hundreds of defendants simply paid Molski off, raising about a million dollars. On the other hand, the first defendant to actually fight back was able to uncover the hundreds of other cases, and the obvious fraud. The court swiftly ruled that Jarek Molski is a vexatious litigant and can file no more lawsuits, except by asking permission (presenting the facts to a judge and the judge deciding that there's really a worthy case there). The lawyers which represented Molski are likewise barred from representing anyone in an ADA case. Their law firm, likewise. Righthaven Another group of lawyers set up a law firm specifically to sue the owners of &quot;BBS's&quot; / internet forums / Q&amp;A sites such as StackExchange, whose public users had pasted up copies of newspaper articles into the BBS. They Bought the &quot;right to sue&quot; from copyright owners such as newspapers - Righthaven didn't own the content, just the &quot;hunting license&quot; to go after people who infringed on the content - with the content owners getting a cut of proceeds. They too filed hundreds of &quot;madlib&quot; lawsuits. In fact their lawsuit engine was so automated that they 'accidentally' sued journalists writing about Righthaven - (who quoted material from the entirely public lawsuit papers themselves - complaints are public by definition unless sealed by the courts.) Needless to say, Righthaven had never heard of DMCA Safe Harbor, or hoped the forum owners hadn't. Again it worked: hundreds &quot;paid up&quot;. Molski and Righthaven carefully chose &quot;settlement offer&quot; numbers ($5000-ish) that would be slightly cheaper than raising a legal defense ($6000-10,000). In the USA, each party pays their own legal bills - there's no concept of &quot;loser pays&quot; unless the other party's conduct is outrageous. It's so rare that when I had the pleasure of doing so, the court told us to take the standard garnishment forms, cross out &quot;defendant&quot; and hand-write &quot;plaintiff&quot; :) And again, the first defendant to actually stand up to Righthaven in court, asked the court to knock Righthaven to the moon, which the court gleefully did. RIAA / MPAA BitTorrent is a file-sharing network with no central hub. It breaks files into thousands of &quot;chunks&quot;. Users collect chunks from hundreds of other users until they have the whole thing. Part of the social contract of BitTorrent is that people who download also upload (seed) to share the chunks they have gotten so far. People who refuse to upload are called leeches. RIAA and MPAA are the trade associations of the music and movie industries, respectively. They searched for BitTorrent (pirated, they claim) copies of their members' music and movies. They then &quot;leeched&quot; those copies with modified BitTorrent software that recorded the IP address of the &quot;seeder&quot;. They took the IP address to the owning ISP, and demanded the customer identity. Then they sent out &quot;pay-us-or-else&quot; letters by the tens of thousands, and filed suits by the thousands. The argument was that the seeder had pirated the music, and that the ISP account holder was financially responsible for that activity, neither claim 100% reliable. This campaign has been supported by the courts, because RIAA/MPAA were very careful of their legal footing. But I only mention this because another gang of lawyers was paying attention, and they had their own ideas. Prenda &quot;Law&quot; This gang of lawyers correctly guessed that if users panicked at an RIAA/MPAA demand letter, they'd really panic if the topic was pornography. So they set up a law firm specifically to apply RIAA/MPAA's techniques to porn. (one wonders if they paid RIAA a royalty). But they were much more outrageous and careless. For instance, rather than partner or purchase legitimate porn content, they worked with porn stars like Sunny Leone to create shell companies who, unbelievably made original content specifically as bait to ensnare BitTorrent users. Again, this situation only works until someone stands up for what's right: then it all falls apart. This ended much, much worse than Righthaven or Molski. The civil judges were so offended they referred the matter out for criminal prosecution. The organizers got 19 years in prison between them.
No The case was dismissed on procedural reasons. Like this. Well, perhaps not so pedantic but there are things that have to happen before the Supreme Court can get involved and they haven’t. For example, the Supreme Court only has original jurisdiction in a limited classes of case; if this isn’t one of those (and it isn’t) it has to be heard in a court that does and then get appealed up the chain. When they have, the court will make a decision on the merits.
I apologize if I'm grossly misinterpreting things here. You are grossly misinterpreting things here. Your mistakes aren't terribly uncommon, but you are completely and totally wrong in what you are suggesting. Does the above bolded part correspond to breaking any specific laws? That is, how would one show that a person engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or given comfort to enemies? The language intentionally mimics the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution, which is treason, defined in U.S. Constitution, Article III. If this could be demonstrated by finding someone guilty of a particular law, in theory couldn't someone bring federal charges against Trump for doing so? (assuming one of his many bad faith acts like cooperating with Russian election interference, or tweeting classified information appeared to be breaking said law). None of the things you imagine could constitute treason. 'Enemy&quot; is a term of art that means a country that the United States is actually at war with, militarily, by providing aid and comfort to the other side that aides them in waging war with the U.S. Cooperating with Russian election interference isn't treason. Inaction isn't treason. The President probably has an absolute legal right to disclose information that is classified for national security purposes. The President is immune from civil and criminal liability for his official acts while he is President. If the President, from his private funds, and not as part of his officially duties, personally paid Taliban soldiers bounties to shoot and kill American soldiers, that might be treason (since the U.S. is at war, within the meaning of the treason statute, with the Taliban). Cooperating with Russia, despite the fact that it has done so is not treason. Even then, federal prosecutors would not press these federal charges against the President while the President was in office. And, the President would be immune, in all probability, to state treason charges for conduct while in office. So the President would have to be prosecuted after leaving office. On the other hand, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not require a criminal conviction to be effective. The intent of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was to deny civil rights in the post-Civil War governments of the United States by Confederate officials and military officers. In practice, Congress used the authority it was granted to remove political disabilities from all but about 500 of the hundreds of thousands or millions of people eligible for this treatment under the 14th Amendment. Couldn't this happen even if a Republican controlled senate decided not to remove him from office after being impeached? That is, even if it wouldn't cause him to be removed from office, couldn't he, separate from impeachment, be convicted of a crime while still holding office? The federal government prosecutes treason. Ultimately, the President is the one who decides whom the federal government prosecutes. So, the President as a practical matter could not be convicted of treason while still holding office, even if he committed acts which actually constitute treason, unlike anything could be plausibly alleged in this case. If he was found convicted of a crime which fit the above bolded passage (and didn't engage in some shenanigans like pardoning himself), who would keep him from taking office? (i.e. enforce the law). A future President can pardon the crime of treason by a former President. Ford pardoned Nixon of crimes that Nixon committed, and many Presidents have pardoned treason convictions at times close to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and to the adoption of the 14th Amendment. But this just can't come up in this case. You'd need a treason to have been committed before someone was elected.
There is, of course, no way to tell how the Court would deal with such a case today. This is not a frequently litigated issue, with lots of case law. I note that in the case you link to, the court limited the statute to false claims made "with a fraudulent purpose". This normally means that the claimant is attempting to secure an improper financial or materiel advantage. In the United States v. Tandaric case, the person convicted had falsely claimed to be a US Citizen on an employment application for a company which did not hire non-citizens, and so gained a job through this false statement. He could have been convicted of ordinary Fraud. The court has not been as protective of Fraud under the First Amendment as it has been of speech generally, or even of false but non-fraudulent speech. I am not at all sure if the court would overturn this law in a similar case today. Edit: In the United States v. Achtner case, the court wrote: But we agree with the District Court that the representation of citizenship must still be made to a person having some right to inquire or adequate reason for ascertaining a defendant's citizenship; it is not to be assumed that so severe a penalty is intended for words spoken as a mere boast or jest or to stop the prying of some busybody, ... This seems to dispose of the example in the question of a neighbor who is merly inquiring as to the character of the area, or perhaps from simple curiosity, and a false speaker who seems to get no direct benefit or advantage from the falsehood. Both linked cases involved false statements made to employers or potential employees, during wartime at that, with the false speaker's employment apparently at stake.
The direct answer is &quot;no&quot; and the indirect answer is &quot;yes&quot;, that is, your way of putting the matter diverges significantly from how the Bill of Complain puts the matter. The claim is that the defendant states violated the Electors Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Due Process Clause. Texas claims that there is an injury in fact, citing various SCOTUS rulings e.g. Wesberry v. Sanders which says that No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined See the argument in the brief for more legal rhetoric. There can be no question that one state can sue another; equally clearly, the plaintiff must show actual harm and not just annoyance. New Jersey v. New York is a case involving a question of equity, not the federal constitution, but there is no legal principle to the effect that one state cannot sue over a constitutional harm rather than an equitable harm. See the brief p. 65 ff. The court does not require that there be exact precedential analogs (otherwise, Roe v. Wade would have turned out differently), what's required is simply that there be reasonable logical steps: SCOTUS gets to decide what is reasonable (or it can decline to decide).
I believe there are courts that have affirmed convictions for obstructing official business or something along those lines, but the general consensus seems to be that conduct like this is not a crime, or that it cannot be criminalized without violating the First Amendment. The most recent decision on point came just a few weeks ago. In Friend v. Gasparino, No. 20-3644 (2d Cir. Feb. 27, 2023), a man sued police for arresting him because he had set up a sign saying &quot;Cops Ahead&quot; two blocks away from where they were running an operation to enforce distracted-driving laws. The trial court dismissed the case, holding (1) that the sign was not protected by the First Amendment because it was &quot;of little, if any, public concern&quot;; and (2) that even if it was protected, the officer's conduct in arresting him satisfied strict scrutiny because if police wanted to prevent distracted driving, there was no less restrictive alternative to arresting the plaintiff. But the Second Circuit reversed, holding (1) that speech remains protected even if it is not a matter of public concern; and (2) that there was no evidence that limiting the plaintiff's speech was necessary to permit the state to write citations and enforce the law, even if it would have been helpful.
If I want to protest for or against President Trump and decide to wear a Trump mask, isn't that speech protected by the first amendment? Probably. The matter of intent, in any event, is for a court to decide (if the prosecutor determines that the question should even be presented to a court). For example, someone seeking to rob a bank in a mask would probably fall afoul of this law, and it's not likely that using a mask of a political figure would enable a successful first-amendment defense. For a political protestor, it could be easy to show that the intent was to make a political statement and not to conceal identity, in which case it would not be necessary to consider the constitutional question, for a critical element of the crime would be missing. That is, if you say "I wasn't trying to hide my identity," and the court believes you, then you haven't violated the statute. That is a separate question from whether the statute is constitutional. For the law itself to be unconstitutional, it would have to be unconstitutional in every application, generally. If some applications of the law are unconstitutional, the law could stand, but prosecutions for the unconstitutional application would not succeed.