Republican legislators and Attorney General Austin Knudsen are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in their running dispute with the Montana Supreme Court, saying the state justices should have excused themselves from ruling on legislative attempts to acquire internal court documents.
The Montana court ruled unanimously in August that Republican lawmakers’ subpoenas to obtain the documents were illegal and exceeded their authority.
Knudsen on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the Montana justices violated the constitutional guarantees of due process of law in the case, because they did not recuse themselves from deciding a case involving their own interests.
“This court should grant the petition and reaffirm that due process forbids even the justices of the Montana Supreme Court to be the judges in their own case,” he wrote.
