Editorial: The Supreme Court Must Speak Clearly On Kolubah, and Soon

Six months after the House of Representatives expelled Rep. Yekeh Kolubah while a Supreme Court stay order was pending, the full bench has heard his appeal and reserved its ruling. The case rests on a narrow question: whether the House was properly served with the order. But the answer will decide whether court orders bind Liberia’s Legislature, and whether due process protects elected officials. FrontPageAfrica urges the Court to rule promptly and plainly.

THE SUPREME COURT of Liberia heard arguments on Thursday in the appeal of Yekeh Kolubah, the Montserrado County District #10 lawmaker expelled from the House of Representatives in April. The Court then reserved its ruling. The Court has every right to take time to deliberate. But Liberia cannot afford a ruling that is late, narrow or vague. The case is about more than one outspoken legislator. It tests whether a court order means anything once it reaches the doors of the Capitol.

THE FACTS ARE simple and troubling. On April 16, 2026, Associate Justice Yussif D. Kaba, presiding in Chambers, granted Mr. Kolubah’s petition for a writ of prohibition. He ordered the House leadership to stay all proceedings and summoned them to a conference on April 20. The next day the House voted to expel Mr. Kolubah. Forty-nine members signed the resolution. The House Clerk’s office said it had received no order from the Court. Yet the Court’s Marshal had delivered the writ to the offices of the Speaker and the Chief Clerk, where a receptionist and a computer operator received it.

IN MAY, JUSTICE Kaba dismissed Mr. Kolubah’s Bill of Information. He held that the House had not been lawfully served, because House Rule 26.5 names the Sergeant-at-Arms as the only officer authorized to accept court documents. Without proper service, he reasoned, the House could not be held in contempt. On Thursday, Mr. Kolubah’s lawyer, Cllr. Jonathan Massaquoi, argued that service on the Legislature is governed by the Civil Procedure Law, not by the House’s internal rules. He cited Section 3.38(9), which requires service on a government subdivision to be made on its chief executive. The Speaker’s office, he said, was the right place.

THIS IS THE first lapse the full bench must confront. A body’s internal rule cannot override the law of the land. If the House’s own rulebook decides who may receive a court order, the House effectively decides whether it has been served. Any institution that wants to escape judicial review would need only to keep its designated officer out of reach. No court in a constitutional democracy can accept that result.

THE SECOND LAPSE lies with the Court itself. The Marshal who delivered the writ is the Court’s own officer. If the service was defective, the defect began inside the Temple of Justice, not with the litigant. Yet Mr. Kolubah alone has paid the price, losing his seat while the procedural question was being argued. Justice should not depend on which desk a document happens to land on.

THE THIRD LAPSE concerns notice. The Court’s stay was public knowledge on Capitol Hill before the vote; Liberian newspapers reported it the same day. Justice Kaba correctly stated that contempt requires actual or constructive notice. The full bench should say plainly whether a legislature that reads of a stay order in the morning press, and proceeds anyway, can claim it did not know.

WE DO NOT defend Mr. Kolubah’s conduct. His remarks on the Liberia-Guinea border dispute angered many colleagues and citizens, and in 2021 he was suspended twice over his invective against then-President George Weah. Article 38 of the Constitution gives each House the power to discipline its members, including expulsion by a two-thirds vote of its entire membership. In a 73-member House, 49 votes is exactly that threshold. The House had the power to act. The question is whether it exercised that power lawfully, with due process, and while a court order was pending.

THE CONSTITUTION IS clear on due process. Article 20 forbids depriving any person of a right or privilege except after a hearing consistent with the Constitution and the law. Mr. Kolubah’s lawyers walked out of the committee hearing on April 15 after being denied a five-day extension and access to the evidence against him. That walkout may have been a tactic. But a committee that moves to expel an elected member within a week of the complaint, without giving his counsel time to see the evidence, invites serious constitutional doubt.

THE STAKES REACH far beyond District #10. Tens of thousands of voters have had no representative since April. If the expulsion stands on a technicality, every legislature in Liberia will learn that a stay order can be ignored if it is handed to the wrong clerk. If the Court instead voids the expulsion without addressing the House’s genuine constitutional powers, it risks a standoff between two branches of government. Neither outcome serves a country that has worked hard, since the end of its civil wars, to build institutions people trust.

LIBERIA’S DEMOCRACY HAS earned international respect, including through peaceful transfers of power. That record rests on a basic bargain: those in power obey the courts, even when the ruling is unwelcome. A House that can expel a member while a stay order sits in its own offices, and a Court that cannot say whether its orders were received, both weaken that bargain.

WE THEREFORE URGE the Supreme Court to rule promptly and to answer the questions directly. Who may lawfully receive service on behalf of the Legislature? Does the Civil Procedure Law govern, or the House rulebook? What is the legal effect of an act taken after a stay order was delivered, however imperfectly? And what process does the Constitution require before a member is expelled?

CLEAR ANSWERS WILL protect the next lawmaker, whatever party or district. They will also protect the House, by telling it exactly what the law requires. Silence or a narrow ruling would leave a dangerous precedent. Liberia needs the Court to be clear.