High court won’t hear dispute over pandemic proxy voting in House
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to the proxy voting system that Democrats put in place in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
McCarthy had sought a declaration that proxy voting, an absent representative giving authority for someone in attendance to cast his or her vote, was unconstitutional. As is typical, the high court said nothing in rejecting the challenge Monday.
House lawmakers voted by proxy for the first time in May 2020 following a House rules change. The change was intended to strike a balance between working from home during the coronavirus outbreak and honoring the Constitution’s requirement to be “present” and voting.
Lower courts had agreed the lawsuit should be dismissed because each house of Congress can set its own rules for voting.
Republicans have also used the proxy voting system to work remotely, but they say they would end that practice should the GOP win the majority in the midterm elections. McCarthy told reporters last week that Americans expect their leaders to work and that proxy voting allows lawmakers to skip important aspects of their job.
“I think people should show up to be paid. I think people should work together across the aisle. And if you’re here, that’s when you can make that happen,” McCarthy said. “And fortunately in the next year, we’ll change that.”
High court could limit 2020 tribal land decision in Oklahoma
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider limiting a recent decision about Native American land in Oklahoma that the state says has produced chaos in its courts.
The justices said they would take up a question to clarify whether the state can prosecute non-Native Americans for crimes committed against Natives in a large portion of eastern Oklahoma that the high court ruled in 2020 remains a tribal reservation.
The case will be argued in April, the court said.
But the justices did not agree to the state’s request that the court consider overruling the 2020 decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma altogether.
The Supreme Court does not typically reconsider its decisions so soon.
But the state argued that crimes are going uninvestigated and unprosecuted because federal authorities — who can bring criminal cases from tribal land when the suspect, victim or both are Native American — are overwhelmed.
“No recent decision of this Court has had a more immediate and destabilizing effect on life in an American state than McGirt v. Oklahoma,” the state wrote in urging the justices to step in.
As a result of the McGirt ruling, Oklahoma lost the authority to prosecute Native Americans for crimes committed in parts of Oklahoma that include most of Tulsa, the state’s second-largest city.
Courts in Oklahoma have since extended the decision to apply to crimes committed by or against Native Americans on tribal reservations.
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and other tribes have argued that only Congress can grant states the authority to prosecute non-Natives for crimes against Native Americans on tribal land.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt applauded the court’s decision to get involved at all.
“The fallout of the McGirt decision has been destructive. Criminals have used this decision to commit crimes without punishment,” Still said in a statement. “Victims of crime, especially Native victims, have suffered by being forced to relive their worst nightmare in a second trial or having justice elude them completely.”
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said his tribe “celebrates the Supreme Court’s rejection of a blatantly political request to overturn its McGirt decision.”
