AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said a judge should reject a Republican lawmaker’s effort to overturn her censure, arguing in a Tuesday filing that the Democratic-led Legislature has wide authority to punish its members.
The state’s response to the lawsuit filed last month by Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, lays out a sweeping view of legislative power. She was censured by the House of Representatives in February after naming and picturing a transgender high school athlete in posts that caught the eye of President Donald Trump and kicked off his funding fight with Gov. Janet Mills.
Libby refused to apologize to the House after the censure, which was only the fourth one in the history of the chamber. That led House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, to invoke a chamber rule barring Libby from voting and speaking on the floor. She can still make motions on the floor, introduce bills and cast votes in her committee.
Her lawsuit claimed that Fecteau violated free speech and due process rights enshrined in the First and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and “effectively disenfranchised” the lawmaker and her roughly 9,000 constituents. But Frey and attorneys in his office responded on Tuesday to ask a judge to deny her bid to overturn the punishment.
“Rep. Libby does not have a First Amendment right to vote on any particular piece of legislation that comes before the House, and absent a right to vote she has no right to debate those bills,” Frey’s office wrote in a 25-page filing.
Frey’s office argued the doctrine of legislative immunity, which bars punishment for lawmakers and staff for official acts, applies in this case. Even if did not, the Democratic attorney general said Libby would be unlikely to win the case on the merits of the law. He asked a judge to deny Libby’s request that her punishment be immediately overturned.
Libby and a group of her constituents are being represented by Patrick Strawbridge, a noted conservative lawyer from Maine who also defended Trump from a congressional attempt to get his financial records that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020.
The Auburn lawmaker is a prolific fundraiser whose political network has gotten funding from Leonard Leo, the longtime Federalist Society leader who helped Trump cement a conservative Supreme Court majority. She has gotten significant attention during Maine’s battle with Trump, and she is a leader of a voter ID referendum that will be decided in November.
All of Maine’s federal judges recused themselves from the case because the athlete named in Libby’s posts has a parent who works for the federal court system here. It is being heard by U.S. District Court judge Melissa DuBose of Rhode Island, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
