Most injunction stories seem to favor the Left—but here’s one they may not like as much.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to grant an injunction requiring the clerk of the Maine House of Representatives to count votes cast by state Rep. Laurel Libby, who had been effectively suspended for her views on gender ideology.
While not a final decision on the merits, this decision means the voters in Libby’s district are no longer disenfranchised.
What’s the background?
Maine forces male and female high school athletes to compete against each other, a policy Libby criticized on Facebook after a boy (who had placed fifth in a male track and field meet last year) won a girls’ pole vault event at a meet this year.
In response, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau pushed the chamber to pass a censure resolution—which it did, on a 75-70 party-line vote—and banned Libby from speaking on the House floor or even voting until she publicly recants her view.
On the Maine Legislature’s website, the House clerk (a defendant in this very lawsuit) and the secretary of the Senate provide a detailed explanation of the legislative process, describing the “legislative function” as “essentially that of proposing, considering and enacting laws.”
By banning Libby from the House floor, Fecteau is keeping her from exercising the core duties of a House member. These include not only participating in debate and casting votes, but also engaging in other legislative activities—like proposing amendments to bills—that occur during floor debate.
On March 11, Libby and several constituents filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the ban on speaking and voting is unconstitutional. Specifically, they argue, banning Libby from the House floor disenfranchised her constituents “in retaliation for protected speech on a highly important and hotly debated matter of public concern.”
Ironically, the censure resolution asserted that Libby’s criticism of the forced-competition policy was “incompatible with her duty and responsibilities as a Member of [the] House.” However, Fecteau’s ban made fulfilling that duty and those responsibilities impossible.
Here’s another irony: Fecteau objects to the lawsuit because, he says, banning Libby from the House floor was a “legislative act.”
After all federal judges in Maine recused themselves, the lawsuit was transferred to U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose, a Biden appointee who sits in Rhode Island. DuBose is openly lesbian, a fact that led National Public Radio to hail her narrow March 2024 confirmation as providing “meaningful representation” for the LGBTQ+ community.
DuBose denied Libby’s motion for a preliminary injunction, agreeing with Fecteau that his ban was a legislative act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit affirmed that decision.
Libby then looked to the Supreme Court, first applying to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (who is assigned to the 1st Circuit) for an injunction requiring the Maine House clerk to count her votes. As often happens with emergency requests to individual justices, Jackson referred Libby’s application to the full Supreme Court for its consideration.
On Tuesday, by a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court granted that injunction. Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed, and Jackson wrote a separate opinion explaining her own objection.
In that opinion, Jackson insisted that a situation like this was “unlikely to recur”—a sentiment that’s hard to take seriously.
On college campuses, the powers in charge rebrand speech they don’t like as “harassment” to ban it. In school districts, gender ideology has driven officials to deliberately undermine the rights of parents.
It seems a stretch to think that labeling as “unethical” the expression of certain political views in order to suppress them—as the Maine House did to Libby—was a one-off, unique quirk of circumstances that won’t be attempted elsewhere.
Jackson also argued that Libby had not identified upcoming “significant” legislative votes or those “in which Libby’s participation would impact the outcome.” Yet she offered no basis for this bizarre view of representation.
The Constitution guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” As the Supreme Court said in 1891, this means “the right of people to choose their own officers … [to exercise] the legislative power reposed in representative bodies.” That isn’t limited to “significant” votes or those in which a particular legislator can determine an outcome.
Led by West Virginia, 15 states filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting Libby’s request for an injunction. They challenged the idea that preventing a House member from taking legislative actions such as debating and voting is, itself, a legislative action cloaked in legal immunity.
In a republic, they argued, the people elect representatives to truly represent them by participating in the legislative process. Here, DuBose said it was enough for representation that Libby retained such minor elements as her office and a “meal allowance”—even though she was banned from actually functioning as a legislator.
At the federal level, the Congressional Research Service explains, the “weight of authority” is that “the House [may not] deprive a Member of the right to vote.” The Constitution gives the House and Senate authority to expel a member, but not to disable that member’s ability to function while he or she remains a member.
Like the flurry of injunctions from district courts targeting President Donald Trump’s executive orders, this injunction is temporary until the underlying merits can be fully litigated. It simply allows Libby to do what she was elected to do: actually participate in the legislative process.
Today, ideological assaults from gender ideology and others are threatening even such basic principles as that saying that representatives should be able to legislate. For now, at least, the Supreme Court has said this has gone too far.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
