House Republicans have tapped leading conservative attorney Chuck Cooper to handle a lawsuit challenging the U.S. House of Representatives' new rules on proxy voting, alleging the system is unconstitutional and dilutes the votes of members who are physically present in the chamber.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia on Tuesday evening, alleges House members must be physically present in order to reach a quorum and then vote. Four constituents are also behind the complaint.

"It is simply impossible to read the Constitution and overlook its repeated and emphatic requirement that members of Congress actually assemble in their respective chambers when they vote, whether on matters as weighty as declaring war or as ordinary as naming a bridge," the complaint reads. "That requirement is no less mandatory in the midst of a pandemic, as the House's forebears amply demonstrated when facing a far more deadly pandemic a little more than a century ago. A majority of the House may have voted to ignore what the Constitution demands of it, but this court may not do the same."