Court rules against Arizona GOP leader in records fight
The high court on Monday rejected GOP state chair Kelli Ward's request to halt the turnover of records while a lawsuit proceeds. The court lifted a temporary order that had been put in place by Justice Elena Kagan that had paused anything from happening while Ward's emergency request was at the Supreme Court.
Ward has said her First Amendment rights would be chilled if investigators were able to learn whom she spoke with while trying to challenge former President Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat.
As is common in situations involving emergency requests to the high court, the justices did not explain their reasoning in their three-sentence order. Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito said they would have sided with Ward but also did not elaborate.
Thomas' wife Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is one of the people who was interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee and has stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. She had urged Republican lawmakers in Arizona after the election to choose their own slate of electors.
"We're glad that two justices thought that the First Amendment associational interests implicated by the case were serious enough to warrant even the drastic step of a Supreme Court emergency stay," said Alexander Kolodin, Ward's attorney. "And we hope that lawmakers and officials that might think of targeting people for engaging in First Amendment protected political association will hear this as a warning shot and think twice before doing it."
A federal appeals court panel previously ruled 2-1 against Ward and said the committee should get records of calls she made and received from just before the November 2020 election to Jan. 31, 2021. That includes a period when Ward was pushing for Trump's election defeat to be overturned and Congress was set to certify the results in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
Ruling against Ward at the appeals court level were judges appointed by presidents of different parties. Barry Silverman, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, and Eric Miller, a Trump appointee, both ruled against Ward. Judge Sandra Ikuta, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, dissented.
The appeals court ruling followed a September decision by a federal judge in Phoenix who also ruled against Ward.
Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, were presidential electors who would have voted for Trump in the Electoral College had he won Arizona. Both signed a document falsely claiming they were Arizona's true electors, despite Biden's victory in the state.
Justices reject another bump stock ban case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday again declined to hear a lawsuit involving a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the gun attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The justices' decision not to hear the case leaves in place a lower court decision that rejected bump stock owners' efforts to be compensated for bump stocks they lawfully purchased, but were required to to give up after the administration ruled they were illegal. Lower courts had said the case should be dismissed.
As is typical, the justices made no comments in declining to hear the case, and it was among many the court rejected Monday.
Last month, the justices rejected two other challenges involving the ban. Gun rights advocates, however, scored a big win at the court earlier this year, when the justices by a 6-3 vote expanded gun-possession rights, weakening states' ability to limit the carrying of guns in public.
The Trump administration's ban on bump stocks took effect in 2019 and came about as a result of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. The gunman there used assault-style rifles to fire into the crowd of 22,000 music fans.
Most of the rifles were fitted with bump stock devices and high-capacity magazines. A total of 58 people were killed in the shooting, and two died later. Hundreds were injured.
The Trump administration's ban on bump stocks was an about-face for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In 2010, under the Obama administration, the agency found that bump stocks should not be classified as a "machinegun" and therefore should not be banned under federal law.
Under the Trump administration, officials revisited that determination and found it incorrect.
The case the court rejected Monday was Roy Lynn McCutchen v. U.S., 22-25.
