Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
The Court during time of pandemic
Today, Mitch McConnell questioned the constitutionality of the digital voting and proxy quorums adopted by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.
“There will be enormous constitutional questions around anything the House does if they fail to demonstrate a real quorum but plow ahead anyhow,” McConnell declared in a talk on the Senate floor.
This latest straw at which McConnell is grasping is his hope he can somehow delegitimize the actions of the Nancy Pelosi–led House, which might—also somehow—weaken the House’s position in bargaining with the Senate and President Trump on upcoming stimulus bills.
Whether McConnell takes his own remarks literally, or even seriously, though, is open to question. Would he really want to take the issue of the constitutionality of remote voting and on-site quorum requirements to the Supreme Court? The same Supreme Court that is now functioning exclusively by digital means, hearing cases and rendering decisions from the safety of the justices’ homes while refusing to assemble at the Court itself? Would the Court rule that the House is acting unconstitutionally by adopting the very same practice that the Court has adopted?
Well, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito are such thorough Republican hacks that they just might. I’d be surprised, though, if the other Republican justices could find a way to navigate through the glaring double standard that such a decision would constitute. While you should almost never bet against the partisanship of the Republican justices who gave us Janus, Shelby County, and Citizens United, I don’t think a pro-McConnell ruling in McConnell v. Pelosi, should such a case come to pass, is foreordained.
I could, of course, be wrong.
