CHARLESTON – A recent filing in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals by Gov. Jim Justice to a residency case against him brought a chuckle to the person who filed the suit last year.

George Terwilliger, Justice’s personal attorney, Friday asked the Supreme Court to throw out the lawsuit against Justice by Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, D-Pendleton.

“I laugh at that and look forward to arguing that before the Supreme Court whenever they started taking that,” Sponaugle said Monday shortly after announcing his campaign for attorney general.

The governor’s office released the writ of prohibition motion Friday. The governor’s office is being represented by Mike Carey, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, while Terwilliger, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, is Justice’s personal lawyer.

The state has paid Carey’s law firm more than $37,000 since Sponaugle filed suit on Dec. 11, 2018.

In the filing, Terwilliger argued a separation of powers issue prevents the court from enforcing the constitutional provision on residency.

“The Constitution requires that the governor ‘reside’ in Charleston, but it does not follow that the courts can mandate that requirement through an extraordinary writ,” Terwilliger wrote. “It is equally clear that there are some questions that are essentially political in nature, meaning that they are committed to the discretion of the political branches, and not susceptible to judicial interpretation and enforcement.”

“Obviously I disagree with that,” Sponaugle said Monday. “Their statement is it’s a separation of powers issue. In essence, nobody can tell Jim Justice what he can or cannot do, even if it’s written in the Constitution.”

Terwilliger argued that by the governor’s mansion and the governor’s office being located in Charleston, that Justice was meeting the definition of “reside.”

Terwilliger said a decision by Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Charles King in favor of Sponaugle’s motion for the court to order Justice to reside in Charleston would be problematic.

“If such a mandate could issue, its enforcement would entail court-supervised monitoring of the governor’s whereabouts,” Terwilliger wrote. “In so doing, the courts would become overseers of the person and political activity of the governor. The absurdity of that proposition is unavoidable and the fundamental, constitutional principle of separation of powers prudently forbids it.”

Sponaugle filed his first residency suit against Justice as a private citizen in June 2018, but King threw out the case because Sponaugle failed to give the state a 30-day notice. A second suit filed with the Supreme Court was rejected in September 2018 before Sponaugle, after filing the 30-day notice, filed again December 2018 in Kanawha County.

Now a candidate for attorney general, Sponaugle said he would recuse himself from the case if elected in November 2020, though he expected the case to be decided more quickly. A stay of discovery was issued while the pending motion is decided by the state Supreme Court.

“I will tell you this, if I am attorney general I’ll reside at the seat of government. I’ll follow the Constitution,” Sponaugle said. “In essence, the governor’s argument is he’s King Jim and nobody can touch him. He’s above the law, and that’s what brought this on to begin with.”