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Ordinarily, once a civil case runs its course in court, the process ends and those involved move on. But in the wake of the 2020 election cycle, plenty of Republican conspiracy theorists lost plenty of lawsuits — and as it turns out, the courtroom defeats weren’t the end of their troubles.
At the heart of the problem is the simple fact that the GOP litigants brought cases that never should’ve been filed. The result has been a striking series of court-imposed sanctions on a sizable group of Republican plaintiffs. The Arizona Republic reported late last week on one of the more notable examples.
Lawyers for unsuccessful Arizona candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem will have to pay $122,200 for filing a baseless lawsuit attempting to ban the use of voting machines prior to the November election, a federal judge has ruled. The ruling puts a dollar figure to sanctions ordered last year by Arizona U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi and covers the legal costs by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
The Republic’s article added that the failed GOP candidates will not personally have to pay the sanctions, but their lawyers are being held accountable for filing a lawsuit in bad faith.
They have plenty of company. Revisiting our earlier coverage, Michigan Republican Party Chair Kristina Karamo, for example, was recently sanctioned for filing a baseless anti-election lawsuit. Sidney Powell was also sanctioned as a result of her work trying to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. The former president himself has also been sanctioned for filing frivolous litigation.
But what helps the Arizona story stand out is the fact that the relevant players have faced court-imposed punishments more than once.
As regular readers might recall, months before Election Day 2020, Lake, Finchem, and their lawyers filed a federal lawsuit, hoping to prevent Maricopa and Pima counties from using electronic election equipment. The case was so absurd that a federal judge marveled at the Republicans’ “frivolous complaint.”
As a result, the failed Republican candidates’ lawyers are now on the hook — again. From the Arizona Republic’s article:
It comes two months after other sanctions awards by judges in election challenges that they ruled had no justification. Finchem was ordered to pay $40,300, and his attorney another $7,400, for a frivolous lawsuit that sought to challenge the Nov. 8 election results. Olsen and another Lake attorney, Bryan Blehm, were ordered by the Arizona Supreme Court to pay $2,000 in sanctions for “unequivocally false” claims alleging 35,000 ballots were added to last year’s election vote count.
I continue to believe these are encouraging developments. Courts should certainly exercise great caution before discouraging worthwhile litigation, but there’s also value in punishing those who clog the courts with cases that never should’ve been filed.
Courtrooms are not supposed to be abused by those filing frivolous cases in pursuit of partisan theatrics. The judiciary is not a toy. There is a reasonable expectation that all litigation, even if ultimately unsuccessful, has at least some merit.
When partisans file misguided cases in pursuit of scoring points, it’s hardly unreasonable to expect them to pay a price.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.