Lawsuit: PA lawmakers accuse Biden of election interference

FPI / March 26, 2024

State lawmakers in Pennsylvania have filed a lawsuit stating that Joe Biden's executive order which directs federal agencies to work with private and nonprofit groups on get-out-the-vote initiatives amounts to election interference.

Stewart Whitson, legal director of the Foundation for Government Accountability, said the Pennsylvania lawmakers’ case arguably is “the MOST important election integrity lawsuit in the country.”

Biden's order, the lawsuit said, violates Act 88, a Pennsylvania law which prohibits private dollars from funding election administration.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed the measure partly in response to grants to local and state election offices in 2020 which originated with donations from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

State Rep. Dawn Keefer, a Republican who chairs the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Keefer and other state legislators assert that Biden’s executive order, as well as separate actions by the administration of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, usurped the lawmakers’ authority.

“The president gave his directive to all of his agencies that they are supposed to facilitate voter registration through third-party agencies, that we can’t get the contracts to or or we don’t know what any of the details are, who they’re working with, and how,” Keefer told The Daily Signal.

“Then there’s the question of: Is the president interjecting here in an election where he’s on the ballot? That’s another issue that you have there,” she added. “Are you trying to interfere in an election where it directly impacts or affects you?”

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction to immediately halt the implementation of the Biden executive order,

Lawyers for the Biden and Shapiro administrations have moved for dismissal of the case, arguing that the lawmakers lack standing and that executive actions on elections at the state level already were authorized by the Pennsylvania Legislature.

“State legislators have rights granted to them in the Constitution, so we do have standing in federal court. The irreparable harm is that they are changing the way elections are being facilitated,” Keefer told The Daily Signal. “Now, we may have authorized them to take action. We never authorized them to break the law.”

The Foundation for Government Accountability, a watchdog group suing the Department of Justice for documents related to Biden’s order, filed a friend of the court brief in the Pennsylvania case.

Said Stewart Whitson: “My organization, FGA, filed an amicus brief in support of the more than two dozen state legislators who have sued to try to stop Bidenbucks along with a couple of other unconstitutional efforts underway in PA.”

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