Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a victory against the Biden administration as a federal judge deemed the $1.7 trillion spending bill passed by the Democrats at the end of 2022 unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
This ruling, delivered on Tuesday by Judge Wesley Hendrix of the Lubbock Division of the Northern District of Texas, opens the possibility of blocking Biden\u2019s allocation of billions in taxpayer funds through subsequent litigation.<\/p>\n
The omnibus bill, signed by Joe Biden in 2022<\/a> amid a family vacation in St. Croix and flown to the location to meet a December 30 deadline, earmarked 45 billion for Ukraine among other contentious allocations.<\/p>\n These included the passage of the Electoral Count Act,\u00a02.6 billion towards January 6 investigations, nearly\u00a0600 million for the Environmental Protection Agency, and\u00a011 million targeting gun owners. Notably, the bill lacked funding for border security, a critical point of contention for many Americans and Republicans.<\/p>\n AG Paxton filed a lawsuit<\/a> early in 2023 challenging the implementation of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023<\/a>, bringing into question the constitutionality of the House\u2019s quorum during its passage. The bill was passed with less than half of U.S. Con\u00adgress phys\u00adi\u00adcal\u00adly present.<\/p>\n \u201cTexas filed this case in mid-February 2023 challenging parts of the\u00a0Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023<\/a>\u2013a $1.7 trillion appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed by President Biden in December 2022. Texas claims to be injured by two unrelated provisions of the Act: (1) a $20 million allocation to DHS\u2019s \u201cAlternatives to Detention<\/a>\u201d case management pilot program, which uses less expensive and more humane\u00a0tools<\/a> like GPS to monitor noncitizens who would otherwise be unnecessarily detained; and (2) the \u201cPregnant Workers Fairness Act,\u201d which newly requires covered employers\u2013defined to include states as employers\u2013to provide certain accommodations for pregnant employees. Although Texas seeks only to block these two provisions, its legal claim is that the Act is invalid because the House of Representatives allegedly did not have a quorum when it passed the Act (some members voted by proxy, which Texas argues was invalid),\u201d Litigation Tracker<\/a> wrote.<\/p>\n The suit highlighted that the House permitted proxy voting, a move that Paxton argued contradicts over two centuries of legislative practice under the Constitution\u2019s Quorum Clause.<\/p>\n According to the press release at the time:<\/p>\n Attorney General Paxton is suing President Biden and members of his Administration over the unlawful signing and implementation of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which was the latest omnibus spending bill.<\/p>\n The U.S. Constitution requires that a quorum of members of the U.S. House of Representatives be present for the lower chamber of Congress to conduct business. When the House passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 in December 2022, fewer than half of its members were present and more than half voted by proxy.<\/p>\n The U.S. Constitution empowers a quorum-less House only to \u201cadjourn from day to day\u201d or \u201ccompel the attendance of absent members.\u201d Because \u201cattendance\u201d means physical presence, the U.S. Constitution does not allow voting by proxy to constitute a quorum. And because the omnibus spending bill wasn\u2019t passed when a quorum of the House was present, it was never lawfully enacted, is unconstitutional, and the federal government should be enjoined from implementing it.<\/p>\n Judge Hendrix\u2019s 120-page opinion meticulously dismantled the Justice Department\u2019s defense of the spending bill, addressing the arguments one by one. In particular, he dismissed the notion that federal courts lack jurisdiction to scrutinize the legislative process, citing Supreme Court precedent that requires resolving any challenges to a quorum rule before applying the enrolled bill doctrine.<\/p>\n Hendrix wrote in his ruling:<\/p>\n \u201cFor over 235 years, Congress understood the Constitution\u2019s Quorum Clause to require a majority of members of the House or Senate to be physically present to constitute the necessary quorum to pass legislation. This rule prevents a minority of members from passing legislation that affects the entire nation. But despite the Constitution\u2019s text and centuries of consistent practice, the House in 2020 created a rule that permitted non-present members to be included in the quorum count and vote by proxy. Pursuant to that novel rule, the House passed a new law included within the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, and that particular provision affects Texas. Like many constitutional challenges, Texas asserts that this provision is unenforceable against it because Congress violated the Constitution in passing the law.<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n And because the House only had a quorum due to this unconstitutional provision of its proxy rule, the House violated the Quorum Clause when it passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. Finally, the Court finds that Texas has carried its burden to show its entitlement to a permanent injunction of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. In light of these conclusions, the Court enjoins the defendants from enforcing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act against the State of Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n You can read the full ruling here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cCongress acted egregiously by passing the largest spending bill in U.S. history with fewer than half the members of the House bothering to do their jobs, show up, and vote in person,\u201d said Attorney General Paxton<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFormer Speaker Nancy Pelosi abused proxy voting under the pretext of COVID-19 to pass this law, then Biden signed it, knowing they violated the Constitution. This was a stunning violation of the rule of law. I am relieved the Court upheld the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n The Texas Public Policy Foundation served as co-counsel. \u201cThis meticulous, 120-page opinion was written after a full trial on the merits,\u201d said TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller. \u201cThe Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) issued the following statement in response to Judge James Hendrix\u2019s ruling:<\/p>\n Article I of the Constitution has always made it clear that House and Senate members be physically present when conducting certain legislative business. For our constitutional system to work, it must be followed.<\/p>\n During passage of Pelosi\u2019s $1.7 trillion lame duck FY 2023 omnibus in December 2022, I noted a physical quorum was not present. Indeed, a majority of Members \u2013 226 \u2013 elected to vote by proxy on the bill\u2019s final passage.<\/p>\n While this ruling\u2019s reach will not be immediate, it is a critically important first step in forming judicial precedent against unconstitutional proxy voting. Thank you to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Public Policy Foundation for leading this effort in court. And thank you to the Mountain States Legal Foundation for their work on the amicus brief we led in the case. I also want to thank former Speaker Kevin McCarthy for working with me to challenge the constitutionality of proxy voting which the Supreme Court did not take up, but represented the right legal and philosophical position \u2014 a position underscored by yesterday\u2019s judgment.<\/p>\n The post Landmark Victory for Texas AG Ken Paxton as Court Strikes Down Biden\u2019s $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill \u2013 Unconstitutional<\/a> appeared first on The Gateway Pundit<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a victory against the Biden administration as a federal judge deemed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n