Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, a Democrat, wrote a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday asking them not to intervene in a case from Republican state Rep. Laurel Libby to restore her House voting and speaking rights after she was censured for calling out “transgender” ideology.
Libby filed a lawsuit against the Democrat Speaker of the Maine House to reverse the censure and restore her ability to properly represent her constituents. She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking that she be able to vote while the lawsuit plays out at the U.S. District Court in Maine, where a far-left activist has been assigned to oversee the case.
On Thursday, Frey filed a brief asking the Supreme Court not to intervene, which would leave Libby in the hands of the very Democrats who stripped her constituents of representation in the state government.
“Like other censures of Maine House members, the censure resolution required Rep. (Laurel) Libby to apologize for her conduct — not recant her views,” Frey wrote in a brief to the high court. “Rep. Libby has steadfastly refused to comply with this modest punishment, which is designed to restore the integrity and reputation of the body.”
Frey added that Libby is asking the court “to insert itself into this intra-parliamentary dispute and, for the first time, pierce legislative immunity for core legislative acts.”
Libby filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on April 28 after two lower courts rejected the request. That petition was filed with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a left-wing judge on the court who oversees the First Circuit. Jackson has the ability to rule on the petition or throw it to the full court.
Not surprisingly, Jackson, known for her one-night debut in a queer Broadway musical, appears to have slow-walked Libby’s emergency petition, which sought relief by May 6 — when the Maine House was set to convene for a legislative session. Jackson finally got around to the routine task of calling for a response to Libby’s petition, but set the response to May 8 — two days after the House convened.
That matters, not just for Libby’s constituent participation in a variety of issues, but the transgender sports issue specifically. Testimony on several transgender-related bills began Thursday, some of which would restrict male students from participating in female sports, use the restrooms of the opposite sex, and use pronouns different than what aligns with their actual sex.
Led by West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey, the attorneys general of 15 states filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Libby, stating, “The Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives stripped Representative Laurel Libby of her power to vote on behalf of her constituents. By all accounts, he did so because of what Representative Libby said publicly about a matter of debate.”
“The right to equal representation ‘can hardly be infringed simply because a majority of the people choose that it be,'” the brief continues. “That right becomes a farce if legislators can demote one of their duly elected colleagues to little more than an informal observer without fear of any judicial response.”
Libby’s censure arose out of a social media post where she called out a male athlete, who claimed to be a female, for stealing a title from females at a sporting event.
According to the Portland Press Herald, Libby would be forced to issue a public apology in order to regain speaking and voting rights.
Last month, Libby was present when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced a lawsuit against Maine to keep men out of women’s sports.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.