Arizona sues US House for refusing to swear in Adelita Grijalva

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes followed through with legal action against the U.S. House of Representatives 28 days after the Republican-controlled Congress refused to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.)

On Tuesday, Mayes’ office filed the lawsuit against the House, its clerk and Sergeant at Arms. Both the state of Arizona and Grijalva are named plaintiffs. The suit was filed a week after Mayes certified the race and sent a letter addressing the issue and demanding that Johnson set a date and location for the ceremony to take place.

The suit requests that a judge permit another person, like a federal judge, to administer the oath, an act permitted by the Constitution.

“I am proud to stand with Attorney General Mayes in representing 812,000 people in Arizona that do not have a voice in Congress because Johnson and the House Republicans are refusing to get to work. I’m going to use every avenue available to me to make sure that we get the representation that we deserve,” Grijalva said in a video shared on Instagram.

She has remained unseated since Sept. 23, when she won the special election to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, an area of southern Arizona with a large Latino population.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a released statement regarding the lawsuit. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

Johnson addressed the lawsuit on Tuesday, stating that Mayes was seeking national attention. “We run the House. She has no jurisdiction. We’re following the precedent,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill, video shows.  

In the weeks since the government shutdown, Johnson has given numerous news conferences and interviews in which he admonishes Grijalva for producing TikTok videos and should instead “get to work… and serve her constituents,” according to an interview with the Wall Street Journal. 

Since her father, Rep. Raul Grijalva, passed in March, over 800,000 southern Arizonans, including several tribal nations, have been left without representation at the federal level. 

Adelita Grijalva and other party members have suggested that the delay is also opportune for Republicans, as it would prohibit her from signing a petition to force a vote on a bill to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Her signature — which she has already promised to add to the petition — would be the last needed to make the vote possible. Johnson has categorized the claim as “absurd.”

Because Grijalva won a special election, precedent follows that she can be sworn in immediately and begin fulfilling her duties as a congressmember. Earlier this year, Reps. Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine, Republicans from Florida, were sworn in outside the regular House session, a day after they won their special elections.

According to Johnson, however, he’s simply following the “Pelosi precedent,” referring to when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — a standing congressional member — swore in Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) 25 days after her election. As of Wednesday, Grijalva’s ceremony has been delayed 29 days. 

Meanwhile, state and national civil rights groups have continued sounding the alarm. Voto Latino, a civic engagement group dedicated to activating Latino voters nationwide, launched a media campaign aimed at pressuring Johnson and Republicans in Congress. 

“Arizona’s 7th is one of the most Latino districts in the country, and every day this delay continues, Latinos are being disenfranchised. At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet and ACA premiums are set to rise due to the Republican government shutdown, the absence of their elected representative is unacceptable. Speaker Mike Johnson must be held accountable,” the organization said in a statement.

Locally, a petition launched by local advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) in early October demands that Johnson proceed with her swearing-in ceremony.

“Arizona voters in Congressional District 7 chose Adelita Grijalva to represent them in Washington. But Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to swear her in, leaving Southern Arizona without a voice in Congress at the exact moment families are struggling through a Republican-led government shutdown,” the petition reads.

“I want to be able to represent our community, our beautiful Arizona, and in order to do that Speaker Johnson needs to stop this obstruction,” she said in the video shared on her social media channels. “It’s been almost 30 days since I was overwhelmingly elected from Arizona and I’m going to continue to fight for you.”