Poison in the Bill: ACLJ Represents 74 Members of Congress in New Lawsuit

We just took major action in court to fight back against President Biden and the radical Left’s unconstitutional overreach.

Today on Sekulow, we discussed the breaking announcement that the ACLJ is filing a critical amicus brief in court to challenge President Biden’s power grab to control state taxes. It isn’t just our members we’re filing on behalf of; we’re representing 74 Members of Congress on this brief in federal court to dispute this unconstitutional provision of the latest “COVID relief” bill.

We believe this is an unconstitutional power grab trying to limit the ability of states that receive stimulus funds from doing anything directly or indirectly that could lead to a tax cut at the state level.

As ACLJ Director of Policy Harry Hutchison explained: There is a “poison pill provision” as part of the latest supposed COVID-19 relief bill that prevents states from lowering taxes directly or even indirectly. This is a power grab because if the state of Tennessee or the state of Kentucky decides to lower its taxes, there is a provision that would allow the “Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, to claw back benefits that the state would otherwise receive under this COVID relief bill. So this provision, in our opinion, is unconstitutional, and it is a direct attack on state sovereignty.”

As ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett noted, the provision would even allow the Biden Administration to take this money back more than three years later. “The federal government is trying to take this power away from the states,” he explained. It’s blatantly unconstitutional, and that’s why we’re taking action in court today.

We’re filing our amicus brief today on behalf of 19 U.S. Senators and 55 Members of the House of Representatives, including key leadership. The lead Members include Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Mike Crapo (ID), Sen. Tim Scott (SC), and Rep. Jim Banks (IN). And it includes some names you may know, like House Minority Whip Steve Scalise.

We also discussed how our team was in federal court as we were on air arguing a critical Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request case involving an email from then-Obama-Biden State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki – who is now the White House Press Secretary – about the lies surrounding the Iran nuclear deal. The Biden State Department has redacted the entire email chain. The judge has now seen the email, the State Department obviously has seen the email, and now we’re in court demanding to see it.

We are also joined by ACLJ Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy Ric Grenell who told us that all of his unclassified emails from when he served as Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) were just turned over – almost entirely unredacted – to a media outlet that sent in a FOIA request. As he said, if this is the new way the Administration is operating, then we should be getting EVERYTHING in our FOIA requests.

We will continue working to expose the truth about the Biden Administration’s deceptions and fighting back to stop this unconstitutional power grab banning state tax cuts.