Supreme Court rejects Trump's final election challenge
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The Supreme Court rejected former President Donald Trump's last remaining challenge of the 2020 presidential election on Monday, denying his request for them to hear his case against the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Trump alleged that Wisconsin election officials violated state law by using what his attorneys called "unauthorized, illegal absentee voting drop boxes" and by allowing poll workers to correct absentee ballot witness certificates. Despite the election being over and President Biden already being in office, Trump continued to litigate the case, filing a brief in February arguing that the case was necessary to prevent similar situations in the future.
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"The narrow window in which legal disputes may be resolved following a presidential election weighs heavily in favor of applying the 'capable of repetition' doctrine to resolve issues capable of reoccurring," Trump's Feb. 9 brief said. "Otherwise, non-legislative state actors may be emboldened in future presidential elections to make even more last-minute changes to state election laws contrary to the Electors Clause than occurred in this year’s election."
The Supreme Court ultimately disagreed with this position, denying Trump's request for it to hear the case. The court's order came weeks after it denied several other election challenges, including a challenge of a Pennsylvania state court ruling that extended the deadline for accepting absentee ballots.
This was not the only election challenge the court rejected on Monday. The Supreme Court also denied a request for a writ of mandamus from attorney L. Lin Wood, who sued Georgia officials including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Wood claimed that state officials improperly changed rules and treated absentee voters differently from in-person voters.
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Wood had sought an order to block lower court decision against him and to preserve election data. He also wanted an order halting Georgia's Senate runoff election, which has already taken place. With the Supreme Court denying his request, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that said Wood lacked standing to bring the case remains in effect.
Also on Monday, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in a religious freedom case where students Chike Uzuegbunam and Joseph Bradford sued Georgia Gwinnett College over policies that allowed the school to restrict their ability to vocally express their reliigious views in designated free speech zones if other students complained. The school ended up changing their policy, rendering the issue moot, but the students wanted to keep the case alive to collect nominal damages.
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In an 8-1 decsion, the Supreme Court ruled that even nominal damages were enough to keep a case alive, even if the issue involved was moot.
"[I]f in the course of litigation a court finds that it can no longer provide a plaintiff with any effectual relief, the case generally is moot," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court's opinion. "This case asks whether an award of nominal damages by itself can redress a past injury. We hold that it can."
Chief Justice John Roberts was the lone dissenter, arguing that the case should have been dismissed because the court could not grant "effectual relief," since the rules in question do not exist anymore, the plaintiffs are no longer students at the school, and they did not claim actual damages.
