I realized that I never posted about oral arguments in the Wayne County case, nor the Supreme Court decision which was handed down while we were driving home. On Tuesday, oral arguments were held, for around an hour, which seemed to me to go very well. I honestly was surprised to find out that they had ruled against us. Here’s the debrief video I made that evening, which includes an excerpt of my rebuttal arguments during the oral arguments hearing:
If I had to guess, I would speculate that they found a procedural means to rule against us, such as standing, or perhaps the existence of the so-called “second signature,” where my client unknowingly signed the letter presented to the Governor by the State GOP. At least I hope so, because otherwise the Court will have modified legislation from the bench – because the law was very clearly on our side.
Here are some of the media reports from the day:
For about an hour earlier this afternoon, lawyers for Governor Justice and the West Virginia Republican Party presented arguments against a lawyer for the chairman of the Wayne County Republican Executive Committee.
A few weeks ago, the governor picked Booth, whose family runs a highway safety contracting business, to fill the vacancy. But Booth’s name had not appeared on a list originally submitted by Wayne County political leaders.
The argument before justices focused on who has the authority to submit names to fill such vacancies and the proper procedure for doing so.
“This is one political party committee that is elected by Wayne County voters engaged in a power grab or attempted control by the state executive committee that has no direct connection to the local Wayne County voters,” said John Bryan, counsel for the Wayne County GOP chairman.
“That is the whole point: that they ended up with somebody they voted for or necessarily even knew but they ended up with somebody that, according to the records, donated to Governor Justice when he ran for office in 2016 as a Democrat.”
He was referring to records showing Booth as a $1,000 maximum-amount donor to Justice’s first run, when he won as a Democrat before changing parties after a few months.
https://wvmetronews.com/2021/02/09/supreme-court-swiftly-rules-the-governor-gets-his-pick-for-state-delegate/
I was obviously freshly perturbed when I gave this interview:
Attorney John Bryan, who is representing Maynard, was disappointed by the ruling.
“The governor has been able to get around the law whenever he pleases for the past year now,” Bryan told The West Virginia Record. “When the full opinion is issued, I suppose we’ll find out how he did it this time. … State laws throughout the country were not followed in the 2020 election, and not a court in the land seems to care.”
https://wvrecord.com/stories/573982025-supreme-court-denies-wayne-co-vacancy-petition-appointed-delegate-can-begin-session-wednesday
