well the u.s supreme court has rejected
an attempt by president donald trump and
the state of texas to overturn results
in the presidential election
the suit challenged president-elect joe
biden's victories in michigan
georgia pennsylvania and wisconsin but
justices ruled that texas didn't have
the right to challenge how
other states run their elections the
defeat marks a huge setback for donald
trump in his bid to seize electoral
victory
from for more let's go to orlando and
speak to professor michael t
morley an election and constitutional
law expert from florida state university
professor welcome it seemed to be widely
expected that this challenge
by texas would fail which turned out to
be correct
why did the supreme court dismiss it
the supreme court held that texas lacked
standing
to challenge the results of the other
states elections
the a presidential election in the
united states we often think of it as a
single
nationwide unitary event when in reality
it's conducted as a series of 51
separate elections within each of the 50
states as well as the district of
columbia
and so the supreme court held that it
lacked jurisdiction over texas's
challenge
because it said the state of texas
didn't have a legal
interest in how other states went about
conducting their presidential election
and whether there were violations of
other states laws
or even violations of the u.s
constitution in those other states
so it refused to hear the case due to
texas's lack of standing
to pursue the types of legal issues that
it had sought to raise
i'd like to get your opinion on the
implications of this challenge it did
fail but after all 18 states and more
than 100 republicans in congress
endorsed uh discarding the results of
the election
what what does this mean
well i think that there's a few
different ways you can look at that
on on the one hand i think it shows
uh certainly widespread institutional
support within the
the republican party for for president
trump the fact that he was
able to get that wide of a backing for
for
for texas's lawsuit on the other hand i
think it shows that at least among
some of this segment of the population
concern about the results of the
election
uh potential just skepticism about the
electoral process as a whole
obviously the the election was conducted
in in the wake of covet 19 there had
been
numerous changes as a result of court
orders and emergency regulations and
other types of emergency orders
that had been passed in order to allow
the election to be conducted
in the wake of a global pandemic uh by
and large i think election officials
across the nation
performed admirably admirably they it
was remarkable that they were able to
pull off
the election with so few unexpected
bumps but
i think that just the sheer extent of
the changes at least among
some portion of the population right led
to skepticism the enhanced use of the
males
obviously read president trump
throughout the campaign had called into
question
heavy emphasis on on mailing voting and
so i think that overall we saw
those factors coalesce in the in the
support on the republican end that that
texas wound up getting before the court
on monday the electoral college meets to
formally elect joe biden
as u.s president we also know lawsuits
brought by trump and his allies have
failed repeatedly across the country is
this the end
of the legal road for donald trump
well th this one of the things that made
the texas
suit so unique and again the the the
court held it didn't even have
jurisdiction a lot of
commentators had had pointed out the
numerous procedural and jurisdictional
hurdles that it faced
but one of the unique aspects of the
texas suit
is that it essentially sought to bring
the entire election before the supreme
court that it identified
four different states where texas
claimed it had statutory and
constitutional problems
and invited the court to to handle the
issue in one fell swoop
they're still re there are still cases
pending in the lower courts as a matter
of fact the wisconsin supreme court
has just agreed to hear an appeal a
brought by the trump campaign tomorrow
there are other cases where the trump
campaign has lost in the lower courts
where it can still ask the supreme court
itself
to hear those cases so over the upcoming
days and potentially even weeks i expect
to see
continued litigation i think it's
extraordinarily unlikely that any of
those lawsuits will succeed
but the short answer is no this this
case
while it presented one unified
package that would have allowed the
court to consider all of the
objections being raised at least in most
of the states across the board
the court's rejection of this case
doesn't shut the door
on all these other cases that remain
pending in the lower courts
okay it's been good to talk to you
professor michael t morley from florida
state university thank you very much
thank you
you