U.S. Rep. Mike Bost’s lawsuit challenging Illinois’ election laws can proceed because he is a candidate for office, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 14.

Bost, a Republican from Murphysboro who represents this area of Southern Illinois, was challenging a ruling in lower courts that he lacked legal standing to sue the state over its mail-in ballot policy. The nation’s high court ruled 7-2 that the lower courts erred and that Bost has an “obvious” stake in election laws as a candidate.

Bost and a pair of 2020 Illinois primary delegates for President Donald Trump sued the Illinois State Board of Elections in 2022, arguing the state’s law allowing late-arriving mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after the polls close violates the federal law establishing an “Election Day.” The ballots must be postmarked by Election Day.

The court’s ruling did not weigh in on the merits of Bost’s argument. Rather, it merely allowed his legal challenge to proceed at the lower level of the federal court system.

The U.S. judicial system typically requires plaintiffs to demonstrate that a law negatively affects them in order to give them standing to challenge it in court. Lower courts, including the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision, ruled Bost was not harmed, largely because he won the 2020 election handily with 60 percent of the vote.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion overturning the decision.

“Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their election, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns,” Roberts wrote. 

Bost had also argued he had standing because he faced the financial harm of having to pay staff to monitor ballot counting beyond Election Day.

“We have won this initial battle, but the fight for election integrity continues,” Bost said in a statement.

While Bost’s case heads back to the lower courts, another related case may be settled first. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging Mississippi’s law that allow ballots to be counted for 14 days after Election Day. A ruling on that would likely have implications for Illinois.

(article courtesy of Capitol News Illinois)