State of Arizona files lawsuit against the U.S. House of Representatives: “I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced”

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva announced that they have filed a lawsuit against the US House of Representatives in a US District Court in Washington DC. Grijalva, a Democrat, won a special election in southern Arizona’s 7th Congressional District on 23 September but Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been refusing to swear her in to her seat in Congress.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters,” said Mayes in a statement. She said that it is “taxation without representation” and she “will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

“Speaker Johnson’s obstruction has gone far beyond petty partisan politics – it’s an unlawful breach of our Constitution and the democratic process,” said Grijalva. “Speaker Johnson cannot continue to disenfranchise an entire district and suppress their representation to shield this administration from accountability and block justice for the Epstein survivors.”

Speaker Johnson cites government shutdown for delay swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva

Typically, the winner of a special election is sworn in within a couple of days of the election. However, there have been cases where the swearing-in of a Representative-elect has been delayed for several days.

Exceptionally long ones have occurred when Congress was in recess, some sticky detail had to be sorted out, or like when congressional procedures were modified during the covid-19 pandemic. Speaker Johnson says that because of the ongoing government shutdown his hands are tied but Democrats are not having any of that.

The House of Representatives has been effectively closed since 19 September after Republicans passed a funding bill that is at the center of the fight between Democrats and Republicans. The bill has stalled in the Senate, over Democrats’ demands that Affordable Care Act subsidies be extended and Medicaid cuts rescinded, leading to the government shutdown on 1 October.

Speaker Johnson has said that he will not reopen the House until the government reopens. Justifying his delay in swearing in Grijalva, he has cited the “Pelosi precedent,” when the swearing-in of two special election winners, one Democrat and one Republican, was put on hold until lawmakers came back from the summer holiday, for waiting until the House returns to business.

One of those, Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, took to social media to point out the stark differences between the two cases. “Hey Mike — if you’re gonna keep invoking my name, at least get the facts right. No one CANCELLED scheduled votes to delay my swearing-in,” he wrote. “You’re deliberately cancelling votes to protect pedophiles and take away health care from the American people.”

Once sworn in, Grijalva would provide the final signature on a discharge petition that would force a floor vote in the lower chamber on releasing all of the Jeffery Epstein files to the public. The bipartisan effort is led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

Speaker Johnson says that he will allow the vote and won’t try to block it, but only once the House comes back into session. There has been a pressure campaign on Republican representatives who have signed on to the discharge petition and that may be thinking about voting for the release of the Epstein files.

This isn’t the first time Speaker Johnson has tried to delay a vote to compel the full release of the Epstein files. In August he sent lawmakers home for the summer recess early to stave off an earlier bipartisan attempt to vote on releasing the Epstein files.

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