Arizona sues House Speaker Mike Johnson for refusing to seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva
By Caitlin Sievers
The Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is thumbing his nose at the Constitution by failing to seat a Tucson Democrat nearly a month after her overwhelming victory in a September special election, U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes argued in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Grijalva and Mayes want a court to declare that Mike Johnson, the GOP speaker from Louisiana, is acting unconstitutionally by refusing to allow the Democrat to take the oath of office and begin serving in Congress. They want the court to either force him to seat her or allow someone else to administer the oath of office if Johnson continues to refuse.
“Speaker Johnson’s obstruction has gone far beyond petty partisan politics — it’s an unlawful breach of our Constitution and the democratic process,” Grijalva said in a statement. “The voters of Southern Arizona made their choice, yet for four weeks, he has refused to seat a duly elected Member of Congress — denying Southern Arizona its constitutional representation.”
Voters in Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District overwhelmingly favored Grijalva in the Sept. 23 special election to fill the seat vacated by the March death of her father, Rep. Raúl Grijalva.
But 28 days later, and a week after Arizona certified the results of the election, Johnson has continued to refuse to seat Grijalva, offering a wide range of excuses, including the government shutdown, which began Oct. 1.
Johnson at one point promised to give Grijalva the oath whenever she requested, then said he’d only do it after Democrats acquiesced to Republican demands and reopened the federal government. At another time, Johnson said the delay was because Grijalva deserved all of the pomp of a swearing in ceremony — and that could only happen once the House resumes its regular session.
Johnson has refused to convene the House since it passed its spending bill last month, instead telling members that they should return to their districts.
Grijalva, and many others, including U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, accused Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing in because she would be the 218th vote needed to force the release of the FBI’s case files concerning pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans have largely opposed doing so because President Donald Trump is reportedly featured in those files, as he and Epstein were close friends in the 1990s before they had a falling out.
Johnson has denied those allegations.
Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl after securing a non-prosecution agreement from federal prosecutors. He was then arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide while in prison awaiting trial.
Trump and Epstein socialized frequently in high-profile circles in the 1990s, and last month congressional Democrats published a lewd birthday card that Trump sent to the convicted sex offender in 2003. Trump, administration officials and Republican politicians alike have dismissed the card as a “hoax,” while Democrats have seized on it as proof that Republicans are trying to bury details about the yearslong relationship between the president and Epstein.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”
During a press conference in the nation’s Capitol on Tuesday, alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Grijalva said that, after her father’s death, his office had continued to provide services to constituents in the southern Arizona district.
But those services ended after the Sept. 23 election, and she can’t resume them until she’s sworn in. And without access to a budget, Grijalva’s been using her personal airline miles to travel to Washington, D.C.
“You know, we’re getting a lot of attention for not being sworn in, but I’d rather get the attention for doing my job,” she said. “And I can’t do that right now without being sworn in.”
In the lawsuit, Joshua Bendor, the solicitor general for Arizona, argues that Johnson doesn’t have the authority to deny Grijalva the right to her elected office simply because the U.S. House of Representatives isn’t in regular session.
“If the Speaker were granted that authority, he could thwart the peoples’ choice of who should represent them in Congress by denying them representation for a significant portion of the two-year term provided by the Constitution,” Bendor wrote.
Nothing in the U.S. Constitution makes the speaker’s administration of the oath of office discretionary, the state argued, and Grijalva has met all the constitutional requirements to qualify for the office.
“Speaker Johnson has not identified any valid reason for refusing to promptly seat Ms. Grijalva,” Bendor wrote. “Instead…Speaker Johnson wishes to delay seating Ms. Grijalva to prevent her from signing a discharge petition that would force a vote on the release of the Epstein files and/or to strengthen his hand in the ongoing budget and appropriations negotiations.”
The state argued that, by refusing to seat Grijalva, Johnson was denying her ability to exercise her authority as a congresswoman “to sign petitions, sponsor bills, obtain and provide information to her constituents about federal programs and matters pending before federal agencies, and advocate with federal agencies, all on behalf of her constituents.”
Johnson has never before delayed the oath of office until a regular session is convened when other members of congress were chosen in special elections. Grijalva and Mayes have both sent letters to Johnson asking him to give Grijalva the oath during the current pro-forma session, like he’s done for other members of congress chosen in special elections.
Earlier this year, the U.S. House swore in two Republicans and one Democratic representative within 24 hours of their elections — before the results were certified by their state elections officials — during pro forma sessions.
A pro forma session is a brief meeting of a legislative body during which no business is conducted.
“By withholding the oath and the office that comes with it, the Speaker has unlawfully interfered with Ms. Grijalva’s constitutional right to take office, and the State’s right to the number of Representatives provided for by law,” Bendor wrote.
Shortly after Mayes and Grijalva announced that they had filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, Grijalva’s campaign told supporters via email that it would set a goal of raising $10,000 each day that Johnson delays her swearing in.
During the press conference, Jeffries called Johnson’s tactics “a disgrace.”
“It’s disrespectful of her,” he said. “It’s disrespectful to the 812,000 people who elected her. It’s disrespectful to the great state of Arizona, and it’s disrespectful to the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be the people’s house, but under Republican leadership has turned into nothing but a rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda.”
