President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris to replace him as the Democratic Party's nominee. Since the announcement, the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, has said it will mount legal challenges state by state to prevent Democrats from replacing Joe Biden as their presidential candidate.
Vice President Kamala Harris - first woman as Vice President in USA
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and the president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers, a law firm in California, told Newsweek, "We're in uncharted legal waters, and the courts will have to sort through any Heritage Foundation or other Republican challenges to a change."
Rahmani added that varying state election laws could create problems for Democrats. "The issue is that each state has their own election laws, and some may not allow a party to switch out a candidate," he said.
"Some state laws may require delegates to vote as 'pledged.' That is, they may require the delegates to vote as selected in primaries and caucuses," he continued.
That could lock some state delegates into voting for Biden at the Democratic National Convention, which is scheduled to take place in Chicago on August 19 to 22. Newsweek has contacted the Democratic National Committee for comment by email outside normal working hours.
Biden, who became the presumptive Democratic nominee in March after securing enough delegates in the primaries, has not been officially nominated by his party, which Rahmani said may help fight off legal challenges.
"Biden hasn't yet been nominated to be the Democratic presidential candidate, which would be a helpful fact in litigation," he said. "That nomination would, of course, happen after the delegates vote at the Democratic National Convention."
"Biden's delegates are not required to support Harris, despite Biden's endorsement. And the convention can adopt or change its own rules. So unless there is a law mandating delegates to vote for Biden, they are free to vote for whomever they want," Rahmani added.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that Republicans would challenge the Democrats if they replaced Biden with Harris.
"I think they've got legal hurdles in some of these states," Johnson told CNN. "And it'll be litigated, I would expect, on the ground there."
The Democratic Party has already responded that Republicans had no legal basis for a challenge.
"The Democratic nominee for president will be on all 50 state ballots. There is no basis for any legal challenge. Period," Marc Elias, a lawyer for the Democratic Party, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.
Mike Howell, the executive director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, told Newsweek that the difficulty of replacing a candidate varied from state to state.
The Heritage Foundation views the swing states of Wisconsin, Georgia, and Nevada as likely arenas for legal challenges, given the complexity of switching presidential candidates in those states.
As the Democratic National Convention approaches, the legal battles and political maneuvers are sure to intensify, putting Kamala Harris' candidacy under a legal microscope. The courts will ultimately decide the legitimacy of these challenges, and the future of the 2024 election remains uncertain.