Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) filed a lawsuit Tuesday over GOP leaders’ refusal to seat a newly elected Democratic lawmaker.
The suit asks a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to declare Adelita Grijalva a member of the House and allow someone else to administer the oath if Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) won’t do so.
Mayes’s office wrote in the complaint that the case is about whether someone duly elected to the House may be denied their “rightful office,” only because the speaker has decided to keep the chamber out of “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,” the suit reads.
Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota, including House representative Ilhan Omar, were blocked from entering...
