President Joe Biden has no authority to order federal agencies to run a voter registration campaign assisted by leftist third-party organizations, argue members of Congress and top state elections officials filed in support of a lawsuit looking to shut down “Bidenbucks.”
Eleven Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives and nine state secretaries of state have submitted amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Biden’s Executive Order 14019 is unconstitutional for many reasons.
“Allowing the executive branch and its political appointees to operate a ‘get out the vote’ program on the national level and with the assistance of federal authority and funding threatens to convert the White House into a partisan political campaign headquarters,” asserts the court filing from the House members, including seven representatives from Pennsylvania.
‘No Such Authority is Granted’
The high court is considering taking up the appeal of 27 Pennsylvania state lawmakers who earlier this year filed the complaint in federal court alleging the order “nullifies the votes of the individual legislators, nullifies the enactment of the Legislature, violates the Electors Clause, violates the Elections Clause, deprives the legislators of their particular rights, and jeopardizes candidates’ rights to an election free from fraud and abuse.”
The amicus filings from the House members and the top election officials in Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming echo those charges.
“The President’s use of executive action to convert federal agencies into get-out-the-vote operations is prohibited by the United States Constitution,” the secretaries’ brief states. “The Elections Clause of the Constitution empowers the states to regulate elections subject to Congresses’ pre-emption power. No such authority is granted to the executive branch.”
They argue that Biden’s order is a violation of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act, which “requires that States offer voter registration opportunities at certain State and local offices, including public assistance and disability offices.”
“The states, not the executive branch of the federal government, determine what offices it shall designate as a Section 7 voter registration agency,” the court filing states. “Under no circumstances have those state legislatures voluntarily agreed to designate a federal office as a voter registration agency.”
‘Dangerous Precedent’
As the secretaries note, the executive order has deputized federal agencies to do what they have not been granted authority to do by Congress or the U.S. Constitution. For instance, under Biden’s fiat the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Field Policy and Management has “connected with local election officers and placed voter registration materials in all ten HUD Regional offices across the country,” according to the brief. The Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service has “issued letters to state SNAP and WIC [Women, Infants and Children] agencies to encourage the promotion of President Biden’s voter registration drive.”
Critics of the federalized GOTV effort call it “Bidenbucks,” a nod to Zuckbucks, the hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped on local election offices during the 2020 election. Biden claims his order is all about promoting the “exercise of the right to vote” and eliminating “discrimination and other barriers to voting.” Such lofty-sounding goals, however, get lost in the implementation of the plan, which appears to be created to target traditionally Democrat voters with the assistance of White House-“approved” leftist groups. Longtime Obama-Biden adviser Susan Rice was in charge of the initiative before stepping down last year.
In March, Judge Jennifer P. Wilson of the Middle District of Pennsylvania granted the Biden administration’s motions to dismiss the Pennsylvania lawsuit because of the “Plaintiffs’ lack of standing to raise the claims at issue.” The Keystone State legislators then appealed the case to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals but asked it go directly to the Supreme Court as November’s presidential election looms. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are asking SCOTUS to decide the critical — and conflicting — question of whether individual lawmakers have the right to take up such constitutional issues in federal court. If the Supreme Court answers yes, the case would then go back to the lower court to decide the merits.
But the amicus briefs filed this week argue that the Supreme Court should also decide the merits.
“In the interest of dangerous precedent and expedience with the 2024 election cycle under way, this Court is postured to exercise its discretion, rule on the underlying merits, and set aside Executive Order 14019 by finding it unconstitutional and enjoining any efforts to enforce said Order,” the court filing from the state secretaries argues.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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