WASHINGTON — Arizona Lawyer Normal Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to attempt to pressure Home Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who gained her late father’s seat in a particular election almost one month in the past.
Johnson, R-La., has mentioned he’ll seat Grijalva as soon as Senate Democrats conform to reopen the federal government. However the two events haven’t been speaking for weeks, and there’s no indication when the shutdown would possibly finish.
The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson final week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents residing in Arizona’s seventh District of congressional illustration. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. Home, in addition to the Home clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the folks of Arizona of considered one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district within the course of,” Mayes mentioned in an announcement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of workplace, he’s subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation with out illustration. I can’t permit Arizonans to be silenced or handled as second-class residents in their very own democracy.”
As he left the Capitol on Tuesday night, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”
Mayes, he mentioned, has “no jurisdiction.”
Grijalva and congressional Democrats have been holding information conferences on Capitol Hill, doing TV interviews and staging protests outdoors Johnson’s workplace to try to pressure the speaker to relent. However Mayes’ transfer escalates the standoff and will get the courts concerned.
Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and different Democrats have argued that Johnson is delaying seating Grijalva as a result of she represents the 218th — and last — signature on a discharge petition wanted to force a House vote to compel the Justice Division to launch all of its recordsdata associated to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
Johnson has repeatedly denied that the delay has something to do with the Epstein recordsdata. The speaker has mentioned he’s comfortable to swear in Grijalva as quickly as the federal government, now on the twenty first day of the shutdown, reopens.
And Johnson accused Mayes, a Democrat who’s operating for re-election in 2026, of in search of publicity following a public clash he had with Arizona’s two Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, over the Grijalva challenge earlier this month.
“So, one more Democrat politician from Arizona is making an attempt to get nationwide publicity. So now it’s the state AG, who’s going to sue me as a result of … Rep.-elect Grijalva isn’t but sworn in,” Johnson instructed reporters Monday.
He mentioned he’s following what he referred to as the “Pelosi precedent,” noting that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took 25 days to manage the oath of workplace to then-Rep.-elect Julia Letlow, R-La. Letlow gained a 2021 particular election to fill the seat of her husband, who died of Covid complications days earlier than he was set to be sworn into workplace. The Home was out on recess following her election, amid the pandemic, and he or she was sworn within the week that it returned to session.
“So I’ll administer the oath to [Grijalva], I hope, on the primary day we come again to legislative session. I’m keen and anxious to do this,” Johnson instructed reporters within the Capitol.
Grijalva handily gained her particular election on Sept. 23, 28 days in the past, and simply 4 days after the Home voted to go its short-term authorities funding invoice and left city.
Johnson continued: “Within the meantime, as a substitute of doing TikTok movies, she needs to be serving her constituents. She may very well be taking their calls. She may very well be directing them, making an attempt to assist them via the disaster that the Democrats have created by shutting down the federal government.”
Grijalva is the daughter of former Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a progressive energy dealer and former Pure Sources Committee chairman who died in March after serving greater than twenty years within the Home.
“There’s a lot that can’t be performed till I’m sworn in,” Grijalva mentioned Tuesday at a information convention with Jeffries. “Whereas we’re getting plenty of consideration for not being sworn in, I might relatively get the eye for doing my job.”
As soon as she is sworn in, Grijalva is anticipated to shortly signal the bipartisan discharge petition — led by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — which might permit them to bypass Johnson’s management crew and pressure a vote on releasing the Epstein recordsdata.
For months, the Epstein challenge has been a nagging headache for each Johnson and President Donald Trump. Most of the president’s MAGA supporters have referred to as for transparency and the discharge of all the paperwork associated to the case. On Tuesday, Johnson identified that the Home Oversight Committee is investigating the matter and has launched greater than 43,000 pages of paperwork from DOJ and the Epstein property.
“The bipartisan Home Oversight Committee is already engaging in what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought — and rather more,” Johnson, standing alongside Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., mentioned Tuesday.
In an interview within the Capitol, Khanna mentioned Johnson ought to simply swear Grijalva in and maintain the vote on the Epstein recordsdata as a result of the difficulty isn’t going away.
“They gotta swear in Adelita Grijalva. I don’t know why they’re delaying the inevitable. They’re sort of hoping this story dies and so they get it out of the entrance pages, however then it comes roaring again as soon as we get the votes,” Khanna instructed NBC Information. “I want we might simply swear Adelita Grijalva in and have a vote on the discharge of the Epstein recordsdata.”
Democrats are anticipated to win one other vacant Home seat within the coming weeks. On Nov. 4, voters will select somebody to fill the emptiness left by the surprising demise in March of Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who represented a closely Democratic district.
If Democrats prevail in that particular election, it might trim the GOP majority within the Home to 219-215 and imply Johnson might solely lose a single GOP defection on any vote.
