Supreme Court rejects case challenging Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot deadline

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case against Pennsylvania’s handling of mail-in ballots, dispensing with yet another legal challenge over the 2020 election.

The justices released an order Monday instructing a lower court to dismiss the case as moot. The order did not include an opinion or indicate which justices supported or opposed the move.

A Republican congressional candidate and four individual voters filed a federal lawsuit against Pennsylvania elections officials in October after a state court ruled that mail-in ballots could be counted if they were received up to three days after Election Day, which legislators had established as the deadline.

Democrats had sued in state court to have the deadline extended due to the expected increase in mail ballots because of the pandemic.

The Republican candidate who brought the suit, Jim Bognet, lost his race against incumbent Rep. Matt Cartwright (D) by slightly more than 3 percentage points.

The Supreme Court’s order comes nearly two months after it rejected a handful of cases brought by former President Trump and his allies that sought to challenge the election results in battleground states that helped carry President Biden to victory.

Bognet’s lawsuit was filed before many of the Trump-related cases, which were largely brought in the days and weeks after Nov. 3.

Biden won Pennsylvania by nearly 82,000 votes but led Trump among mail-in ballots by about 733,000. According to The Associated Press, fewer than 10,000 mail-in ballots were received within the three days between Election Day and the deadline established by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.