Supreme Court rejects Mark Meadows’ appeal in 2020 election interference case
SCOTUS NEWS
on November 12, 2024
at 11:00 am
Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s decision to reject Meadows’ case was a result of a list from a private conference held last week. (Katie Barlow).
The Supreme Court rejected a plea by Mark Meadows to transfer his Georgia electoral interference prosecution to federal courts. Meadows served as Donald Trump’s chief of staff during his first term. The announcement was made as part of the list of orders from the private conference held by the justices last week. The justices did not add any new cases to their docket for the 2024-25 term.
Meadows, along with Trump and 17 others, was indicted in 2023 by a Fulton County grand jury on charges that he had interfered in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Meadows sought to move his case to federal court, arguing that he had been acting in his official capacity as chief of staff and could therefore seek immunity from prosecution.
A federal district court rejected his plea, concluding that Meadows had not shown a connection between the conduct for which he had been indicted and his job as chief of staff.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld that decision. It argued that the law allowing federal officers to move their cases into federal court does NOT extend to former officials. The court of appeals said that Meadows’ participation in an alleged conspiracy against a presidential election “was not related to his duties.”
The Justices also declined to hear a pair challenges to New York rent-regulation laws and specifically to the 2019 amendments. They argued that the amendments are a physical taking of their property, in violation of the Constitution, because they give tenants a veto over the conversion of buildings into condos, which denies them the right to use their property as they see fit The challengers – landlords in New York City and Yonkers – contended that the amendments are a physical taking of their property, in violation of the Constitution, because they give tenants a veto over the conversion of buildings into condos, which denies them the right to use their property as they see fit, and because they limit the landlords’ ability to reclaim rental properties for their own use.
The landlords had also asked the justices to overrule or clarify their 1978 decision in Penn Central Transportation v. New York City, in which the court ruled that the ban on construction of a 55-story office tower over New York’s Grand Central Terminal did not limit the use of the property so much that it effectively deprived the owner of the use of its property.
However, after considering the cases for several weeks, the justices ultimately denied review, with Justice Neil Gorsuch noting that he would have granted the petitions. The justices denied review of several high-profile petitions that they had considered last week. These included a challenge to admissions policies at three of Boston’s elite public schools, and an effort by Wisconsin parent to challenge a district’s policies supporting transgender students and non-binary individuals.
