Lawsuit filed to remove U.S. Rep. Scott Perry from Pa. ballot
The legal challenge mimics lawsuits challenging former president Donald Trump’s appearance on the primary ballots in several states.
A former Pennsylvania congressional candidate filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry from the state primary ballot, arguing that Perry’s role challenging the results of the 2020 election should make him ineligible to run for office.
Gene Stilp filed the suit as a voter in Perry’s 10th District, calling on Secretary of State Al Schmidt to remove Perry from the ballot for engaging in insurrection. The lawsuit mimics challenges to former President Donald Trump’s candidacy in several states, including in Colorado, where the state Supreme Court last month removed Trump from the ballot.
The Colorado case will likely go to the U.S. Supreme Court for an unprecedented decision in a presidential election that’s been defined by Trump’s legal troubles.
Stilp argued Perry’s efforts to overturn the certification of Pennsylvania’s election and participation in Trump’s fake elector scheme amounts to insurrection under the U.S. Constitution. Article 3 of the 14th Amendment says that people who engage in insurrection are unable to hold public office.
Perry, whose district includes Dauphin County and parts of Cumberland and York Counties, was part of Trump’s inner circle devising attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He spoke on the House floor hours after rioters ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to have Pennsylvania’s electoral votes thrown out.
Perry has not been charged with a crime in connection to the Jan. 6 attack or the efforts to overturn the election results. Stilp noted in the filing that the Constitution doesn’t require someone to have been convicted of insurrection to be ineligible for the ballot.
“It is not necessary for an insurrection to be violent and have people taking over buildings,” Stilp said in a statement. “Attempts at insurrection can be nonviolent and quietly orchestrated as in the attempt to overturn the certification process using false certification certificates from false sets of electors. Actions of insurrection and support of insurrections bring down the full force of the Fourteenth Amendment, Section Three.”
Perry refused to be interviewed by the House committee investigating that attack, calling it an “illegitimate body.” A Trump White House staffer testified to that committee that Perry spoke to her after the Jan. 6 riot about a request to receive a presidential pardon, a claim Perry has denied.
A federal judge last summer ordered Perry to turn over more than 1,600 texts and emails to FBI agents investigating efforts to keep Trump in office after his 2020 election loss and illegally block the transfer of power to Biden.
Stilp, a Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged former U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta in 2012, is known for his public advocacy campaigns, including in 2005 when he used a large inflatable pink pig to protest wage increases for state legislators.
A campaign spokesperson for Perry called the lawsuit frivolous, “filed by a fringe activist whose claim to fame is an inflatable pink pig.”
“Congressman Perry is focused on critical problems facing south-central Pennsylvania and our nation, which is why he’s traveling with the speaker of the house today to examine the ongoing crisis at our Southern border,” campaign spokesman Matt Beynon said.
The lawsuit also requests a referral of “information of any possible criminal activity by Scott Perry or any other party discovered in this case to the Pennsylvania attorney general for prosecution.”
The Pennsylvania Department of State declined to comment Tuesday.
Last month, State Sen. Art Haywood held a news conference and called on Schmidt to remove Trump from the ballot, citing the 14th Amendment and the Colorado court’s decision.
Schmidt said then: “Pennsylvania’s Election Code does not give me, as secretary of the commonwealth, the authority to reject a nomination petition on the grounds that a potential candidate does not meet an office’s eligibility criteria. In Pennsylvania, that is a question that can be answered only by the courts.”
Perry, who has been in office since 2013, is one of the few potentially vulnerable Republican members of Congress up for reelection in Pennsylvania this year.
He easily won reelection in a politically split district last year. This year, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on Perry’s ties to Trump’s failed effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Four Democrats hoping to challenge Perry will face off in the April primary.