The one-line dismissal is the rule in cases where certiorari is denied. The Supreme Court's daily orders contain page after page of such single-line dismissals, since so many cases are referred to them.
The Texas case is different because here the parties are actual States. The Attorney General of Texas is filing the suit in his official capacity on behalf of the State. This is one of the few circumstances in which the U.S. Supreme Court has original jurisdiction: when one State sues another.
The Bill of Complaint is uncommonly long: more than 150 pages. When I skimmed it last night, I didn't see anything that hasn't already been brought in lower courts and rejected -- in some cases with scathing rebukes.
It attempts to invoke Bush v. Gore to create a "federal question," the magic circumstance that allows a U.S. court to take up what is essentially a state issue. The Third Circuit rejected this, but the Supreme Court could always disagree. It attempts to invoke the elements of the Constitution -- the Electors Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause -- in its causes of action. This has already been taken up by the circuit courts and argued with fairly unassailable logic. None of them applies in the way the plaintiff here desires. And it attempts to relitigate all the questions regarding the constitutionality of state laws as they apply to the respective state constitutions, questions that the state high courts have already ruled upon. (Absent a federal question, those rulings are unreviewable in the Supreme Court.)
The statistical argument failed numerous times already, mostly because the testimony supporting it has never been taken by deposition, only by affidavit. Affidavits are considered hearsay for purposes of evidence in court. Testimony by deposition would allow voir dire into the methods used, which would almost certainly fail the Daubert test for admissibility as opinion testimony.
Where it's going to fail, however, is -- as usual -- in the deficiency of its pleading. The Bill is dozens of pages of the same arguments that have failed to convince even the most sympathetic of lower courts. I'm sure that's where the attorney general wishes attention most to be paid. But the real problems here are technicalities such as laches.
The doctrine of laches says that you must begin to pursue a remedy in court upon knowledge of first injury. You may not delay, or as the legal jargon goes: "sleep on your rights." This is especially true when delay would prejudice any court action against the defendant. For example, if I discovered that someone was infringing on my patent, I cannot wait a year or two until they have amassed a pot of revenue as the fruits of their infringement, and then swoop to claim it as ill-gotten gain. I had the duty to stake my claim before the defendant committed further resources.
Here, when the claim is that a law is unconstitutional on its face, the laches clock begins ticking as soon as the laws hit the books. "First injury" for facial unconstitutionality occurs when the law is enacted, as opposed to as-applied unconstitutionality, which requires a body of facts in some case to adjudicate. If Texas believed the laws of other states that regulated their balloting violated their state constitutions, and that this would injure Texas' rights in the Electoral College, they had a duty to begin action when the laws were enacted, not just after it became apparent that they would lose. Texas had a duty to bring action before the defendant States used those laws to conduct elections. The defense of latches is especially strong when suit is filed after the States certified their electoral votes. Eleventh-hour tactics after intentional delays almost always fail on the grounds that the other party is thereby prejudiced.
And the prayer for relief is the same nonsense that no court yet has yet agreed is even remotely allowable under Article III. Texas wants all the electoral votes from the defendant states to be invalidated. No court has yet recognized that the appropriate remedy for balloting irregularity affecting one party is the categorical, irrevocable disenfranchisement of huge numbers of other voters who arguably cast their ballots lawfully, in good faith.
