THREAD:
Good evening, followers of Rudy's judicial hijinks and other interested parties. The Motion to Expedite the appeal of the Pennsylvania lunacy is now available.

Your livet[w]eet starts now:

At the start it's worth noting that this is a 6-page document, so it's clearly not a merits brief. Instead, it's simply a motion for expedited review.

By the time the 3rd Circuit is prepared to rule on this, some counties may already have certified.

Seriously, we're about 14 hours out from at least one of the counties these clowns want to enjoin completing certification, we're more than 24 hours past the ruling they're appealing on an "emergency" basis, and this is what they came up with.

Oy.

But let's dig in.

The first paragraph says they're appealing the denial of their motion to amend - which is kind of strange because I'm not at all sure they CAN really appeal that without also appealing the dismissal.

I mean, if they get the 3rd to ONLY send it back for amendment, they're just going to lose most of the case on standing again - they'll get back the claim about the observers, but they'll lose that on standing, too.

So that seems like a strange point to make your leadoff hitter - why is that the first point they're bringing up instead of the standing issue or the merits issue?

Moving on -
OK, these were the claims before the trial court - but so far nothing on the basis for them being rejected or the grounds for appeal.

As I mentioned earlier, the actual deadline is Nov 30th, because unless certification happens before then PA effectively has no legislature. Which would arguably be a bad thing.

Wait - they're still talking about the 2nd Amended Complaint, and it's the end of page 3 and one page is going to be signatures ---

NO WAY. They CANNOT only be asking for expedited review of the refusal to allow leave to amend.

OK, now they're talking about what their 2nd Amended Complaint would allege.

Holy crap, maybe they're really only asking for expedited review of the refusal to allow leave to amend.

And FFS they really are proposing a briefing schedule that moots the currently requested relief.

What is their plan if they don't get leave to amend?

And I don't believe it. They really are only requesting expedited briefing on the refusal to allow leave to amend.

I'm..........................

WHAT in the name of all that is holy, unholy, or mundane are these clowns smoking?

Seriously - let me take a stab at the first sentence of an opposition to this absolutely bonkers request. It's not going to take long, because this practically writes itself.

"Appellants, in an emergency filing more than a day after the District Court found that amending their complaint would result in undue delay, request that this court to permit them to file a 2nd Amended Complaint barely 12 hours before the relief they request will become moot."

And, seriously, what is their game plan if the 3rd Circuit looks at the trial court's ruling and says, "wait, even if we let them amend, the trial court's just going to dismiss everything on standing again."

This is --

I'd be very curious to see if the experienced appellatetwitter crowd can think of a reason for this approach, because it makes little sense to me.

/fin

Addendum - here's the document. Sorry I forgot to link it at the top.

https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2020/11/File-Stamped-Emergency-Motion-to-Expedite.pdf