Thread by @MarinaMedvin

🚨 Texas has filed its Reply to the 4 states’ Response, and so briefing is officially done. Next up, we await word from SCOTUS.

BTW, this Texas Reply basically called the 4 Defendant states’ Response weak and wrong. I enjoyed the beat-down.

Link to Texas Reply brief: supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/2…

"In an effort to obfuscate their unconstitutional abrogation of election security measures in the name of COVID-19, [they] tack b/w misstating the facts pled in the Complaint & arguing that this Court can ignore the express language in those statutes. Neither approach has merit."

BTW, back in February, Justice Thomas wrote: "we likely do not have discretion to decline review in cases within our original jurisdiction that arise between two or more States. The Constitution establishes our original jurisdiction in mandatory terms." supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf…

Article III states that, “[i]n all Cases . . . in which a State shall be [a] Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction.” §2, cl. 2.

In this circumstance, “[w]e have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given.” Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 404 (1821) (Marshall, C. J., for the Court).

Jutice Thomas' dissent in Nebraska v. Colorado in 2016: “If this Court does not exercise jurisdiction over a controversy between two States, then the complaining State has no judicial forum in which to seek relief.”