Ted Cruz Is Just Like Rosa Parks, Say Ted Cruz’s Lawyers in FEC Lawsuit

Lawyers for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had an unusual analogy for the senator in a fight he is waging with the Federal Election Commission, comparing him to Rosa Parks in a court filing.

In a court filing, Ted Cruz says the rule that he can withdraw only $250,000 from his campaign is like telling “Rosa Parks [to sit] in the back of the bus.” pic.twitter.com/NeFwGf3511

— Adav Noti (@AdavNoti) July 1, 2019

Cruz’s lawyers wrote that the FEC asserts “that Senator Cruz and the Cruz Committee inflicted their injuries on themselves because they could have arranged to repay the Senator’s loans using pre-election funds. Yes, and Rosa Parks could have sat in the back of the bus.”

To compare Cruz standing up against an FEC campaign finance restriction to the legalized segregation challenged by Parks at considerable risk to her own life is quite a bit of chutzpah.

Cruz has been suing the FEC to recover $10,000 he loaned his own campaign during his 2018 run for re-election to the Senate. Cruz had loaned the campaign $260,000, but his campaign could only pay back $250,000 of that due to FEC limitations on “post-election repayments.”

Cruz’s lawyers said in the original complaint that the restriction “abridges political speech” in violation of the First Amendment. Now they have upped the ante, apparently.