Supreme Court to consider reviving GOP challenge to Illinois mail ballot deadline
The Supreme Court will consider reviving a lawsuit challenging Illinois’ ability to count mail ballots received after Election Day, the court announced in a brief order Monday.
Lower courts ruled Rep. Michael Bost (R-Ill.) and two of President Trump’s 2020 electors from the state had no legal standing to bring their lawsuit.
More than a dozen states allow mail ballots to be received after Election Day so long as they were postmarked or certified by the time polls close, and Republicans have looked to demolish the practice in court.
The legality of the practice is not yet before the Supreme Court, but the new case enables the justices to weigh in on who is able to bring such lawsuits.
The case will be considered during the court’s next annual term, which begins in October. Oral arguments are likely to be held late this year.
Bost, who represents Southern Illinois and chairs the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, sued in May 2022 alongside Laura Pollatrini and Susan Sweeney, who served as some of Trump’s presidential electors in the state in 2020.
A Trump-appointed federal district judge ruled they can’t claim legal standing by asserting they face injury as voters and political candidates. The judge ruled their case failed to state a legally viable claim, anyway.
A panel on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, agreeing that the plaintiffs had no standing.
In their petition to the high court, Bost and the two electors said the decision disrupts a long line of cases enabling federal political candidates to challenge election regulations.
“In the aftermath of the 2020 elections, however, for a variety of reasons, courts have limited candidates’ ability to challenge the electoral rules governing their campaigns. This case presents the latest—and an extreme—example of this trend,” their attorneys wrote.
The plaintiffs are represented by Judicial Watch, a conservative group known for unearthing government records under the Freedom of Information Act.
Illinois’s election board, represented by the state attorney general’s office, urged the justices to turn away the case, saying the lower court was merely applying settled precedent.
“The case presents no sufficiently important—or even sufficiently discrete—legal question warranting the Court’s review, it does not conflict with this Court’s opinions, and it does not implicate a division of authority among lower courts. The petition should be denied,” the state wrote in court filings.