Sadly, my home state was on the list of those named in the election lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Many Georgia residents are horrified that we live in a state supposedly run by a Republican trifecta, yet our election procedures deviated so drastically from the election laws passed by our legislators. So even though we will not be invited to join, I fully agree with a statement from Texas GOP Chairman Allen West following the Supreme Court declining to hear the Texas lawsuit:
“The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressman, has decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable. This decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
To be clear, I do not read this as West calling for a group of states to secede from the Union. Rather, I read it as a group of states banding together to uphold the law defined by the Constitution. Following Inauguration Day 2021, the “moderate” Biden administration has made promises on several policy fronts that will run afoul of our founding documents, and such a group will be necessary.
States joining together to litigate and push back against these issues will slow or stop this encroachment on our civil liberties. As I have said for several months now, blue states and cities feel emboldened to ignore immigration law, which is an area of law the federal government clearly has responsibility for. Red states should feel equally emboldened to refuse to enforce laws that infringe on our constitutional rights.
This alliance could make full-throated and joint objections in court on various issues from onerous COVID-19 restrictions that infringe on our freedom of association or fines, fees, and taxes that place undue burdens on legal gun owners. It could also use the blue-state tactic of just refusing to enforce them. There is no longer an incentive for the Right to observe a political version of the Marquess of Queensbury rules. The Left abandoned them long ago, and it is past time to meet them on the field they are playing on.
There should also be no trepidation in playing by the rules they have set. Certainly, the state-level leaders of such a coalition will be savaged in the media for failure to comply. However, we have a few with spines of steel. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem never caved to the COVID-19 panic peddlers and can be counted on to withstand pressure. And why would they want praise from a media that has elevated New York Governor Andrew Cuomo after his disastrous pandemic response?
Texas stood up to bring the election lawsuit SCOTUS just denied. A degree of righteous indignation is in order. The named states violated the U.S. Constitution and their own state laws using executive and judicial fiat. This in and of itself is a corruption of our election process that must be remedied. That the legislatures in these states are not standing up for their own citizens is startling.
The election of 2020 and the aftermath will have far-reaching implications. Joe Biden’s call for unity is a farce that is really just an invitation to unify around his agenda. Like West proposes, a union of states with principled and strong leaders would be a legitimate backstop to some of Biden’s worst ideas. This is a critical moment in our country, and it is time to make use of federalism and the autonomy America’s Founders provided to the states in our country.
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