Virginia Democrats may go to court over the issue of whether the Lieutenant Governor can break ties on organizational matters in the Senate. As indicated in a previous post, I am skeptical about the merits of this claim.
(Another useful resource on this subject is the website of the National Conference of State Legislatures, which contains a comprehensive list of state legislative chambers which have been tied over the years. Of particular interest here is NCSL’s note that “A lieutenant governor’s vote broke organizational deadlocks in Idaho (1990) and Pennsylvania (1992). There was speculation that the lieutenant governor would determine party control in the Virginia Senate in 1995, but a power-sharing agreement between the political parties was negotiated instead.”)
For present purposes, however, lets assume that Virginia Democrats are correct on the merits. Can they get judicial relief? If this were a question of congressional organization, I would say the answer almost certainly would be no. Federal courts are extremely reluctant to intervene in the internal affairs of the legislature, and have employed a variety of doctrinal methods to avoid doing so. See, e.g., Vander Jagt v. O’Neill, 699 F.2d 1166 (DC Cir. 1983) (refusing to hear Republican challenge to allocation of committee seats in the U.S. House of Representatives).
Continue reading “Can a Court Resolve the Virginia Senate Deadlock?”