The Biden administration has mounted a legal challenge to a Texas judge’s ruling that Congress unconstitutionally passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus funding bill in 2022 because lawmakers cast votes without being physically present, relying on a COVID-19 pandemic-era proxy voting rule.
“The district court’s holding is a remarkable intrusion into the internal proceedings of a coordinate branch of government, and it has no basis in the Quorum Clause’s text, history, or purpose,” DOJ attorneys wrote in the filing, arguing that members of Congress who voted remotely did so in line with House rules that permitted proxy voting and were not “absent” from legislative business, as the district court had found.
The Justice Department is seeking a reversal of the district court’s ruling, which found the proxy voting rule unconstitutional but did not seek to nullify the entire $1.7 trillion spending bill and only prohibited the federal government from enforcing a component of the Appropriations Act against the state of Texas.
The DOJ argued that the U.S. Constitution’s quorum clause sets the minimum number of members of Congress required for the House to conduct business but does not dictate how they must participate.
“The Constitution grants to each House broad power to ‘determine the Rules of its Proceedings,’ U.S. Const. art. I, [Section] 5, cl. 2, and the House was well within its constitutional prerogative to adopt a rule providing a means by which members could participate in legislative business remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and be counted toward a quorum,” the DOJ filing reads.
Paxton, who did not immediately respond to the request for comment, previously praised the district court for finding that the bill was passed unconstitutionally.
“Former 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.”
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was instrumental in implementing the proxy voting rule in May 2020, citing the outbreak of COVID-19 as justification.
The proxy voting rule, which was extended several times, let members of the 435-seat House serve as proxies for colleagues who were unable to cast floor votes in the chamber, whether because they were in quarantine or for other reasons.
When the $1.7 trillion bill was passed, more than half of the members of what was then a Democrat-led House weren’t present to provide a quorum and voted by proxy.
However, the relief that Hendrix provided was “limited to abating the injury that Texas has proven will occur” by blocking one provision of the Appropriations Act, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, from being enforced against Texas.
In his lawsuit, Paxton alleged that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act put an undue burden on the state government to accommodate pregnant employees, arguing that Texas already has laws that accommodate pregnancies and that the unconstitutionally passed provision risked opening the state to lawsuits.
Paxton argued that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 “directly affects Texas by altering this long-standing status quo” and amends existing laws “to open Texas to lawsuits to which it has never before been subjected.”
He also argued that the provision’s attempt to regulate Texas and its state agencies was a bid “to waive Texas’ sovereign immunity.”
The DOJ’s Aug. 9 appeal of Hendrix’s ruling argues that the judge erred in finding that the quorum clause contains a “physical-presence requirement,” such that the House was precluded from adopting a rule allowing members to vote remotely and be counted toward a quorum.
The Justice Department is seeking a reversal, which would overturn the relief provided to Texas in the form of blocking enforcement of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
