Two of Michigan's Supreme Court justices — Robert Young and Joan Larsen — have recused themselves from considering a case involving the recount of nearly 4.8 million ballots cast for president in November.
The two are included on a list of potential appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court that president-elect Donald Trump revealed before the election. And while both said they were reluctant to recuse themselves from the case, they decided to so any decision the court might come to in the case couldn't be open to appeal because they stayed on.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who requested the recount, asked that Young and Larsen recuse themselves from hearing an appeal of a Michigan Court of Appeals ruling that said that the Board of Canvassers should never have approved the recount and that it should stop.
"The citizens of Michigan elect the justices to resolve the complex disputes that reach the Supreme Court, and we must not shrink from that duty," Larsen wrote in her recusal statement, noting she did not seek to be included on the list and has not had any contact with Trump or his campaign regarding the vacancy created when Justice Antonin Scalia died in February.
"Yet the president-elect and his surrogates have repeatedly affirmed his intention to select someone from the list to fill the vacancy," she said. "My appearance on the president-elect’s list and his presence as a party in these cases creates a conflict requiring my disqualification."
For Young, an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is a remote possibility, he said in his recusal statement.
"As I have previously stated, anybody can make a list. In this regard, after serving as a jurist for 21 years, 18 on this court, I fully acknowledge that, at the age of 65, the probability of my being selected and appointed from the president-elect’s infamous list of United States Supreme Court potential appointees is extraordinarily remote," he said.
He also said he didn't want to create political drama by remaining on the case.
"Now more than ever, a bit of judicial restraint is required to resist the calls of political sirens who urge the courts to engage in politics by another name," he said. "I do so in order that the decision made by my colleagues in this case will not be legitimately challenged by base speculation and groundless innuendo by the partisans in this controversy and beyond."
The recount started on Monday, but was stopped two days later when a U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith halted the hand recount in Michigan, concluding there's no real evidence of foul play and there's no valid reason to continue the recount.
The Michigan Supreme Court has not made a ruling yet on Stein's appeal. Without Larsen and Young, there still will be a 3-2 Republican majority ruling on the case.
