3 Supreme Court Justices Recuse 2nd Time in Case Accusing Them of Wrongly Rejecting 2020 Election Lawsuit

The lawsuit targeted members of the court for allegedly violating their oath of office.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 12, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court refused on July 22 to rehear a lawsuit that was filed against three justices because they rejected a previous lawsuit aimed at lawmakers who certified the 2020 election victory of President Joe Biden.

In a rare move, three justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—recused themselves from the case because they were named as co-respondents in it.

The new ruling follows the court’s decision on May 28 to turn away the longshot legal bid by Raland J. Brunson of Ogden, Utah, who has gained notoriety among supporters of former President Donald Trump for his legal activism.

Mr. Brunson has filed several lawsuits along with his brothers. He told The Epoch Times that he filed the latest lawsuit, which alleged the justices violated their oath of office, to draw attention to the importance of oaths of office.

In the case at hand, Brunson v. Sotomayor, Mr. Brunson sued Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in their official capacities for voting on Feb. 21, 2023, to deny the petition for certiorari, or review, in his previous lawsuit known as Brunson v. Adams.

In Brunson v. Adams, he sued hundreds of members of Congress in 2021, claiming that they violated their oath of office by not giving time for investigations of election fraud in the 2020 election and by certifying the election victory of then-challenger Joe Biden over then-incumbent President Trump in a process that concluded in the early morning of Jan. 7, 2021, following the U.S. Capitol breach.

Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) appeared in the short title of the petition filed in that appeal because she was named first in the list of 388 respondents. Also included as respondents were President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Vice President Mike Pence. The lawsuit sought the removal from office of President Biden, Ms. Harris, and the members of Congress.

In the unusual lawsuit, Mr. Brunson argued that avoiding an investigation of how President Biden won the election “is an act of treason and an act of levying war against the U.S. Constitution which violated Brunson’s unfettered right to vote in an honest and fair election and as such it wrongfully invalidated his vote.”

In that appeal, the Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari without comment in an unsigned order on Jan. 9, 2023. The court then denied a petition for rehearing on Feb. 21, 2023, also without comment in an unsigned order.

Later, in February 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit rejected the case of Brunson v. Sotomayor.

On May 28, all three Democrat-appointed justices being sued in the same case recused themselves as the Supreme Court denied that petition for certiorari.

The Supreme Court justices cited judicial disqualification mandates in the U.S. Code and the Code of Conduct for Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, which the nation’s highest court adopted in November 2023.

Mr. Brunson argued in his petition for rehearing filed on June 12 in Brunson v. Sotomayor that by voting to deny the petition for certiorari, the justices violated their oath of office.

The court has “a legal and binding duty under the law to grant” the petition, which “centers on their oath of office which cannot be ignored without it being a violation of their oath of office,” he argued.

“If the Justices cannot be checked by their oath through Brunson’s petition or others like ... it, then our freedoms are subject to what they declare them to be instead of what they are,” the petition stated.

The justices’ oath requires them to be impartial, to administer justice and “do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” and uphold the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s laws.

The decision not to rehear Brunson v. Sotomayor came in an unsigned order on July 22. No justices dissented, and the court did not explain its reasoning.

Again, the three justices cited judicial disqualification mandates related the fact that they are parties in the legal proceeding.

Mr. Brunson told The Epoch Times that the court’s decision not to rehear the case did not surprise him.

“I mean, we’re going after their own immunity,” he said.

For the Supreme Court to grant a petition, it has to qualify under the court’s criteria, he said.

“It has to be something that’s going to affect the whole nation, or something that’s a contradiction to something they’ve already ruled on before,” he said.

Mr. Brunson said he was “curious to see what they would do with it.”

“It was worth a try, and educational, and there was a chance in a million that maybe something could happen. And I knew the odds were against me from the beginning, but ... I had nothing to lose on this,” he said, adding that he hoped the lawsuit created “awareness” about oaths of office.

“And the philosophy that the Brunson brothers have is this: It doesn’t matter who the president is or our leaders are. As long as they keep their oath of office, we’ll do fine.”

Mr. Brunson said more lawsuits are coming but that he couldn’t discuss them because he is “still strategizing.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the three justices, for comment, but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.