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Watch: Attorney Erick Kaardal advises law students to pursue meaningful work: Sue government. Protect people's rights.

Updated: Apr 5



By Patrice Johnson | April 3, 2024



Watch video: "Election Integrity Explored," by Attorney Erick Kaardal at University of St. Thomas Federalist Society


“I'm not really political, but my work has political implications,” Attorney Erick Kaardal said while speaking before an audience of law students at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 14.

Kaardal. a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Chicago Law School, encouraged the budding lawyers to pursue meaningful work. He recalled that, after earning his law degree, he decided to specialize in challenging the government on behalf of regular people. He said he enjoys suing “any governmental entity that violates people's rights.”


Over the course of his 30-year career, Kaardal said he had witnessed the emergence of a pressing threat to people’s rights. Then in 2019 and 2020, he realized “election  integrity  was a  subject  matter  worthy  of a  law  school  course."

"We  could  have  a  whole  course,  you  know,  one  of  these  subjects a  week,  and  we  could  cover  all these  subject  areas,  because  the  progressive  billionaires and their  nonprofits  have  gamed  our  election  system." The elites and their nonprofits are now “unduly influencing state election officials to violate federal and state law.”

The unlawful actions started as “generally legal,” Kaardal noted, but “where the government has evolved, they’ve purposely led our election officials to violate the law, which is a bad thing.” So bad, in fact, that today’s violations of constitutional protections present a “worthy” challenge to aspiring and practicing lawyers.

“The  government  is  a  worthy  opponent. Their  lawyers  are  above  average. They're  central  and  they  really  fight,  fight  sometimes  like  criminal  defense  lawyers,  right?  And  they  really  fight  even  if  they're guilty.

Kaardal noted that legal battles chart the course of history. “Mollie Hemingway recently wrote in one of her books [Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections] that the way to understand the 2020 election is to start with the post-election litigation.”


Kaardal, who has chalked up 63 election integrity wins and two U.S. Supreme Court victories, emphasized that he “works with others to message about injustice.”

“What  could  be  more  important  than  a  case  against  the  government…leaving  a  bunch  of  cases  behind  you  in your  career  path?” he asked.
“People  view  the  most  important  cases  generally, generally  as  cases  involving  the  government.”

Kaardal, a partner in the law firm Mohrman, Kaardal & Erickson, P.A, has filed lawsuits against federal and state agencies, counties, cities, school districts, and universities—any governmental agency trampling on citizen rights. He has current cases working their way through federal and state courts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, and his watershed wins in the Great Lakes States are rippling across the nation.


In Michigan, Kaardal and team are representing 11 state legislators. The election integrity case focuses on the constitutional rights of state legislators to regulate the times, places, and manner of elections. The legislators claim two ballot initiatives, Proposal 2 of 2022 and Proposal 3 of 2018, bypassed the legislature to change the state’s election laws in violation of the U.S. Constitution and Michigan Constitution. If successful, the case before the U.S. District court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, could retract both ballot referenda from the Michigan Constitution.  


The good news, Kaardal emphasized is “the United States has lots of ways” to right the ship. One avenue for undoing government descent to totalitarian control is through state legislatures retaking control of elections, like banning private monies from influencing election administration and undoing ballot initiatives that usurp state legislators’ Constitutionally protected rights.


Kaardal said, “Another way is to file lawsuits. Another way is to elect officials who don't think this way, so we have lots of democratic input.”  


Before opening the floor to questions, he added, “So, my message is very hopeful, hopeful that we're working our way out of it. But you need people with firm convictions in order to do the work.”  

“One of my daily prayers is I give my heart and soul to you, Lord, but in exchange, give me some meaningful work to do here on Earth,” Kaardal said. “Constitutional law is like higher than everything.”

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The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Michigan Fair Elections. Every article written by an MFE author is generated by the author or editor alone. Links embedded within the article, however, may have been generated by artificial intelligence.

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