The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a conservative congressman who had sued over rules in Illinois that allow mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after an election.
The question in the case was not the rule itself but whether a political candidate has the right to challenge the rules governing the vote count in the candidate’s election.
A majority of the court found that the answer was yes.
The justices have said they will hear a more significant case evaluating the legality of late-arriving mail-in ballots later this year. That case will test rules in Mississippi that allow the counting of ballots received after Election Day.
But many election law experts had warned that a decision in the congressman’s favor in Wednesday’s case could clear the way for a host of lawsuits challenging all kinds of election rules in states throughout the country, particularly from Republicans who have advanced a narrative that some state rules, especially involving mail-in ballots, unfairly favor Democrats.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the Constitution required a legal challenger to have a “personal stake” in a case in order to sue. And indeed, the chief justice found that Representative Mike Bost, the Illinois Republican who challenged his state’s election rules, clearly had that kind of stake in the outcome. Mr. Bost argued that his campaign would incur extra costs to monitor the counting of late-arriving ballots.
“He is a candidate for office,” the chief justice wrote. “And a candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election.”
The case is one of several lawsuits brought by allies of President Trump challenging rules around mail-in ballots after his 2020 election loss. Mr. Trump has long in part falsely blamed the increased use of mail-in ballots during the pandemic for his loss.
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The court’s other conservatives joined the chief justice in the outcome, although Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, wrote separately to say they would have found for Mr. Bost for slightly different reasons. The court’s other two liberals, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented.
Chief Justice Roberts analogized the congressional elections to a 100-meter dash. He wrote that each runner would suffer if the race were “unexpectedly extended to 105 meters.” In much the same way, he wrote, “an unlawful extension of vote counting,” if one took place, would deprive candidates “of the opportunity to compete for election.”
Justices Barrett and Kagan said Mr. Bost had standing to sue because he had shown he suffered a financial injury, not because he was a political candidate.
Justice Barrett, in her concurrence, wrote that Mr. Bost had “suffered a traditional pocketbook injury” because of his increased campaign costs to monitor the ballots received after Election Day.
In her dissent, Justice Jackson said the majority had incorrectly carved out “a bespoke rule” for political candidates in a decision that “now complicates and destabilizes” the court’s standing rules and “America’s electoral processes.”
The case is one of a number related to elections pending before the justices. In October, they heard arguments in a dispute over Louisiana’s congressional district map. That case, Louisiana v. Callais, began as a traditional fight over whether the map was an illegal racial gerrymander, but the justices significantly broadened the question last summer to include an evaluation of what role race can play in drawing electoral maps. That move called into question whether the Supreme Court would gut the Voting Rights Act, a landmark law from the civil rights era.
In the Mississippi case that will be heard later this term, Watson v. Republican National Committee, the committee, along with the state’s Republican Party and some individual voters, sued in 2024 over the state’s rules for mail-in ballots. They argued that allowing mail-in ballots to arrive after Election Day and still be counted ran counter to Congress’s intent.
The case will test the meaning of “Election Day.” Mississippi has defended its laws, asserting that Congress set a date for voters to decide, not a date for the ballots to arrive.
The justices have not announced a date for oral arguments in the case, but a decision upending Mississippi’s rules could affect dozens of other states, throwing election rules into chaos before the midterms.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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