As someone who has worked on campaigns, I know that Election Day often feels like catching your breath after a very long, tiring sprint. This year feels different. While Virginia, New Jersey and California are facing consequential elections, regardless of the outcome, there will be no time to rest. We will still be fighting battles on all sides.
Many of those battles are taking place in the courtroom — and in many of those battles, we are winning.
That is especially clear in California, where lawsuit after lawsuit has been filed to prevent the redistricting ballot measure from proceeding with today’s vote.
In fact, something quite extraordinary happened on Friday in a federal court in Texas. A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed just two days earlier by two Republican congressmen challenging California’s new redistricting law sua sponte — that is, on his own initiative, without even waiting for the defendants to respond to the complaint.
While it is highly unusual for any judge to take such an extreme action, this is particularly noteworthy because the judge who dismissed the case is one of the most conservative in the country. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Donald Trump during his first term, has gained a reputation as an archconservative with a penchant for allowing cases brought by right-wing advocates to proceed.
But the failed lawsuit in Texas is not an aberration. So far, four lawsuits have been filed to prevent California’s ballot initiative — and all four have failed. Three of the four, including the most recent one in Texas, were dismissed before the state of California could even respond.
Dismissing a case before requiring the defendant to file a motion is an extraordinary step for a judge to take. It signals that the claims are irredeemably flawed — so frivolous that it would be a waste of judicial resources to require a response.
Nor is California the only state where Republicans are flailing in their efforts to stop midcycle redistricting. Virginia Republicans have launched their own desperate litigation to block redistricting in the Commonwealth.
The first lawsuit — seeking to prevent the state legislature from amending the state constitution to allow a redraw in 2026 — was filed in Tazewell County, a rural area in southwestern Virginia that Donald Trump carried in 2024 with 83% of the vote. When their emergency motion failed, a different group of Republicans filed a similar motion in Richmond.
Yesterday, their motion was denied because the plaintiffs lacked standing and power to intervene in the legislative process. There will be a hearing on the Tazewell County case on Wednesday.
Collectively, these six cases — all filed within a few days — can be viewed as Republicans taking desperate steps to rig the midterms. Knowing they cannot win on a level playing field and saddled with an unpopular president, the GOP is filing these lawsuits to prevent Democrats from offsetting Republican gains in states like Texas, Missouri and North Carolina.
But I believe these cases signal something deeper — a continued willingness among Republicans to bring abusive litigation aimed at undermining free and fair elections. In that sense, this is nothing new. Viewed against the backdrop of the post-2020 election period, these recent cases fit a broader pattern of failed GOP efforts to restrict voting rights and enable voter suppression and election subversion.
Take, for instance, another major GOP defeat in court last week. On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., permanently blocked the portion of Trump’s election-related executive order that would have required proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form.
In rejecting the president’s claim, the court didn’t simply rule against him on a technicality — it rejected the very premise of his constitutional authority. As the judge wrote: “Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such change.”
Though not as dramatic as dismissing a lawsuit without requiring a response, the judge’s decision in this case was similarly dismissive of the claims being made.
People often ask me whether these repeated GOP losses reflect bad case selection, poor lawyering or something else. After all, given the current composition of the courts, one might expect the Republican Party to fare better in voting and election cases than its pitiful record suggests.
I wish I could say this reflects superior legal skill on our side. But honestly, I believe the GOP’s failures in court stem from the unreasonableness of its clients’ demands. Part of a lawyer’s job is to tell clients when they simply do not have a case.
What we know from the public record is that Trump is quick to fire lawyers who deliver that truthful message. The result is a GOP legal apparatus filled with attorneys afraid to speak hard truths to their clients. Frivolous cases get filed, and even marginal ones are compromised by unreasonable demands or misstatements of fact and law. The need to please MAGA politicians leaves Republican lawyers out on a practical — and ethical — limb, even before sympathetic judges.
To be clear, I have no sympathy for the lawyers who lend their names and bar licenses to advance antidemocratic legal theories. Nor do I care what impact this may have on their willingness to bring more meritorious claims in the future.
However, I do worry that it has created a perception among the MAGA faithful that the courts are “rigged” against them — when, in fact, the opposite is true. It is the politicians they support who are lying to them. We all saw what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when the disconnect between fact and fiction became too great.
For now, our job is to defeat these cases as they arise. But at some point, we will need to turn to the larger task of reestablishing respect for the rule of law and for free and fair elections within the GOP.
Today, most voters may be able to freely cast their ballot from the candidate of that choice. However, that may not be true next year or the year after that. We must recognize the challenges we face ahead, and take action now.
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