REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
By Jonathan Bilyk | Legal Newsline
The U.S. Supreme Court will step into a fight over whether Illinois’ mail-in balloting regime is legal, as the high court has agreed to allow a Republican Illinois congressman to attempt to revive his lawsuit asserting Democratic lawmakers violated the Constitution and federal law by allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to two weeks after Election Day.
On June 2, the Supreme Court granted a so-called writ of certiorari to U.S. Rep. Michael Bost in his dispute with Illinois’ Democrat-dominated state government, which gives Bost the chance to argue before the court on the question of whether lower courts wrongly determined he lacked the ability to sue to challenge the state’s controversial election law.
“It is an injustice that the courts would deny a federal candidate the ability to challenge an election provision that could lead to illegal votes being cast and counted for two weeks after Election Day,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political organization providing attorneys to represent Bost in the action.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case is a critical opportunity to uphold federal law, protect voter rights, and ensure election integrity. Illinois’ 14-day extension of Election Day thwarts federal law, violates the civil rights of voters, and invites fraud.”
Bost, of downstate Jackson County, had turned to the U.S. Supreme Court for relief in November 2024, about five months after a divided appeals court had sided with the state in shutting down Bost’s lawsuit.
Bost and two other Illinois Republicans had filed suit in 2022, just before that year’s November general election. The lawsuit at the time sought a court order blocking Illinois from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, if those ballots included votes for federal offices, including U.S. House of Representatives, Senate or President.
The lawsuit took aim at a law enacted by Illinois’ Democratic legislative supermajority in Springfield and Gov. JB Pritzker in 2020. That law had used the Covid pandemic to justify rewriting the state’s election laws to greatly expand mail-in voting in Illinois.
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