Radio Recap – Breaking: Justice Alito Orders Response in PA Case

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
December 7, 2020

3 min read

Supreme Court

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Justice Alito has ordered a response in one of the Pennsylvania election cases.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live, we discussed the breaking news that Justice Samuel Alito has ordered a response in the Pennsylvania election case and has moved up the date. Justice Alito wants a response before the electors are seated.

Justice Alito is the Circuit Justice for the 3rd Circuit, which is significant in that a case has been brought by Congressman Mike Kelly (PA-16) challenging some of the election irregularities that allegedly took place in Pennsylvania. They took an application up to the Supreme Court of the United States and originally the response date for the state of Pennsylvania per the order of Justice Alito was this coming Wednesday, December 9th. This new order has moved the date up to Tuesday, December 8th.

Why is that significant? Because on Tuesday afternoon, the electors are to be seated.  Justice Alito is demanding a response from Pennsylvania before any elector is seated so that he can then determine how he is going to deal with this issue.

ACLJ Senior Counsel Andy Ekonomou elaborated on the significance of Justice Alito’s order:

That’s exactly why he moved it up. He wanted to give himself more time before the electors met, in order to make a decision as to what he’s going to do on the case. By moving up the response date from the state from Wednesday to Tuesday – Tuesday, December 8th at 9 a.m. – that gives him three hours between then and when the electors meet at noon on that day to make a decision as to whether or not he may grant a stay of the seating of the electors.

The case is captioned “Mike Kelly, U.S. Congressman” and then some other individuals versus the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the General Assembly, also Governor Thomas Wolfe, and Kathy Boockvar, the Secretary of State for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Congressman Kelly and the other plaintiffs have filed an emergency application for a writ of injunction pending the filing and disposition of the certiorari petition. They are asking for a stay, that everything stays in place.

ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison explained what that means:

Essentially, a stay prevents the parties, in this particular case the parties associated with the government of Pennsylvania, from moving forward and basically allowing the electors of the state of Pennsylvania to vote in favor of the so-called certified candidate who in this case would be Vice President Joe Biden. I think that it is clear on the face that the state of Pennsylvania violated the United States Constitution by essentially changing the rules for electing the electors [in violation of the state constitution] and that is called forth in the United States Constitution. On its face, there is a plausible claim but the real issue right now is timing.

Timing is the key issue. We’ll continue to keep our audience updated as the situation unfolds.

The full broadcast is complete with much more discussion and analysis by our team about this important case coming out of Pennsylvania and its potential impact on the election.

Watch the full broadcast below.