The U.S. Supreme Court on May 20 reinstated a Maine state lawmaker’s speaking and voting privileges that had been suspended over her criticism of males participating in girls’ high school sports.
In March, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives barred Maine Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican, from speaking or voting on the House floor until she recanted her views on Maine’s policy allowing transgender participation in school sports, according to the lawmaker’s application filed with the court.
On May 20, the Supreme Court granted Libby’s request for an injunction blocking the House policy as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit considers the case. The unsigned order did not provide reasons for the decision.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor indicated she would deny the application. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a dissent from the granting of the application.
A federal district court previously denied Libby’s application for a preliminary injunction, finding legislative immunity prevented the court from acting because the speaker’s “sanction” was a “legislative act” and the disenfranchisement of the voters in Libby’s legislative district was not so “extraordinary” as to override immunity.
Libby appealed to the First Circuit, which also declined to block the House policy.
In her April 28 application to the Supreme Court, Libby challenged the speaker’s decision to suspend her privileges as a lawmaker.
“The verbal censure (unwise as it may be) is not what Applicants challenge here. It’s what happened next.
“The Speaker declared Libby was barred from speaking or voting until she recants her view. This means her thousands of constituents in Maine House District 90 are now without a voice or vote for every bill coming to the House floor for the rest of her elected term, which runs through 2026.
“The ongoing and indefinite denial of Libby’s voting rights is unprecedented,” the application said, adding that the U.S. House of Representatives found long ago that the Constitution forbids that chamber from preventing one of its members from voting.
“The member’s vote is not her own; it belongs to her district. And depriving an entire district of representation is no more constitutional than excluding that district from a redistricting plan in the first place. … The same rules apply in Maine.”
On May 8, Maine’s House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, a Democrat, filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to take up the case.
The brief said that on Feb. 17, Libby “targeted” a high school student who had competed in an event “because that student is transgender,” and identified that student by name. The post, written on her official Facebook account, “quickly went viral,” according to the brief.
Fecteau said he saw the post and “was immediately concerned about the student’s safety and welfare” and sent a letter to Libby, urging her to delete the post. Libby declined.
The Maine House passed a resolution with a vote of 75 to 70, requiring Libby to “accept full responsibility for the incident and publicly apologize to the House and to the people and the State of Maine,” the brief said.
“Like other censures of Maine House members, the censure resolution required Rep. Libby to apologize for her conduct—not recant her views.”
Libby declined to apologize, the brief noted. Fecteau determined that Libby had violated House rules and ruled she could not participate in floor debates and floor votes until she apologized.
The speaker said that Libby “retains all other legislative privileges and continues to enjoy considerable means to advance and oppose legislation and otherwise represent her constituents,” despite those restrictions.
In her dissent, Justice Jackson wrote that Libby’s application isn’t an emergency and fails to meet the “high bar” imposed by the federal All Writs Act, which gives the Supreme Court authority to issue injunctions. She said that the First Circuit is “moving quickly to evaluate the legal issues this case presents,” and oral argument is scheduled for the coming weeks.
Libby has failed to show that her right to the relief she requested is “indisputably clear,” Jackson wrote, citing a legal precedent.
This leaves “many difficult questions,” such as whether there are limits to state legislatures’ power to bind lawmakers to ethics rules, and whether federal courts may determine if those rules are improper, Jackson wrote.
For example, “Does it violate a representative’s First Amendment rights to be subject to sanction under such rules, and does it make a difference what the sanction is?”
“This Court has neither addressed nor answered most of these questions,” Jackson wrote.
