The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential ballots in two key battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Mr. Kennedy, an independent, suspended his campaign in August and endorsed former President Donald J. Trump. In emergency petitions to the court, he had mounted a last-ditch argument, saying the states had violated his First Amendment rights by keeping him on.
The decisions by the justices were unsigned and gave no reasoning, which is typical in such cases. There were no noted dissents in the Wisconsin challenge. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch dissented in the Michigan case, echoing the reasoning of a dissent from an appeals court earlier in the litigation.
Since throwing his support behind Mr. Trump, Mr. Kennedy has sought both to be removed from and to remain on various state ballots. In September, the Supreme Court rejected a separate request from Mr. Kennedy asking that his name appear on New York’s presidential ballot.
Although early voting is already underway in both Wisconsin and Michigan, Mr. Kennedy asserted that he had acted in a timely fashion to try to remove himself from the ballots. Keeping him on, his lawyers said in asking the Supreme Court to intervene, compromised his “message of support for former President Trump.”
That he still remained only showed a disparity between how major-party candidates are treated versus independent candidates, Mr. Kennedy’s lawyers wrote, adding that Wisconsin allowed major-party candidates an extra month to adjust whether they appeared on the presidential ballot.
“Forcing a person onto the ballot,” they added, amounted to compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment, and Wisconsin’s rules for independent candidates violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Lawyers for the Wisconsin Elections Commission had asked the justices to reject Mr. Kennedy’s request, calling the proposal an “absurdity,” particularly days before the general election. A decision in his favor, they added, “would require the county and municipal clerks of Wisconsin to handcraft and apply millions of stickers to Wisconsin ballots in order to cover his name — at least those ballots that have not already gone to voters and been returned.”
In Michigan, Mr. Kennedy is challenging a decision in September by the state’s Supreme Court, which declined to remove him from the ballot. It reversed an appeals court ruling and could have significant implications in the state, which is seen as crucial in the election.
In the majority opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court found that Mr. Kennedy had not pointed to a “source of law” that would allow him to withdraw from the ballot, adding that he had asked for an “extraordinary remedy.”
As in Wisconsin, lawyers for Mr. Kennedy suggested that his First Amendment rights had been violated. “Forcing a party to engage in speech they would not otherwise make is compelled speech in its most basic form,” they wrote.
For Mr. Kennedy to remain on the ballot in Michigan would have “dire consequences related to the November 2024 election,” they added.
In a brief to the Supreme Court, Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, had asked the justices to reject Mr. Kennedy’s arguments, saying that the election was “well underway” and noting the work that would ensue.
“It is no longer possible for Michigan’s 83 counties to reprint and distribute new ballots — a process that can take up to two weeks to complete,” Ms. Benson’s lawyers wrote.
The lawyers added that Mr. Kennedy had not raised the same underlying claims in previous litigation and that “no court has recognized that preserving a candidate’s ballot access after nomination results in a First Amendment violation.”
His previous efforts, including to remain on New York’s ballot, undermined his arguments, they added.
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