U.S. Supreme Court allows Mike Bost to challenge how Illinois counts
mail-in ballots
[January 15, 2026]
By Ben Szalinski
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 Wednesday.
Bost, a Republican from Murphysboro, 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 that
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 on Wednesday did not weigh in on the merits of Bost’s
argument. Rather, it 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% 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. “Their interest extends to the integrity of
the election — and the democratic process by which they earn or lose the
support of the people they seek to represent.”
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.
Bost’s right to sue
Wednesday’s ruling rejects the state’s argument to the court in October
that Illinois’ law regulates voters, rather than candidates. But
Roberts, a conservative jurist, wrote Bost has an “obvious” stake in the
state’s election laws as a candidate for office.
“The counting of unlawful votes — or discarding of lawful ones — erodes
public confidence that the election results reflect the people’s will,”
Roberts wrote. “And when public confidence in the election results
falters, public confidence in the elected representative follows. To the
representative, that loss of legitimacy — or its diminution — is a
concrete harm.”
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U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, a Murphysboro Republican, speaks to reporters
in Milwaukee following an event with Illinois Republicans during the
Republican National Convention in July 2024. (Capitol News Illinois
photo by Peter Hancock)
Roberts said elections are like a track race where a runner would be
harmed by a rule-change extending the race beyond its original length.
But liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was joined in her dissent
by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote that example oversimplifies elections.
“It is far from obvious that a runner with a track record like Bost’s —
who expects to win both races based on sound statistical analyses of his
current and past performance” would be harmed in a way that requires the
courts to get involved in his race, Jackson wrote.
Jackson argued the ruling now means candidates are no longer required to
demonstrate how a law harms them in order to challenge it.
Jackson wrote the majority “complicates and destabilizes both our
standing law and America’s electoral process” by “carving out a bespoke
rule” granting candidate-plaintiffs standing “simply and solely because
they are ‘candidates.’”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion in
favor of Bost and was joined by Justice Elena Kagan. Barrett wrote she
disagreed with Roberts that Bost had standing simply because he is a
candidate for office but was sympathetic to Bost’s argument that he
suffered financial harm from the law.
Both Jackson’s and Barrett’s opinions argue the majority improperly
allowed candidates to challenge laws without suffering real harm.
Implications of the ruling
Justices on both sides of the ruling also disagree over how the
majority’s ruling will impact the judicial system’s involvement in
elections.
Roberts wrote he believes the decision will help courts avoid ruling on
the merits of election laws in the immediate aftermath of an election
because candidates can challenge the laws earlier in the process, rather
than waiting to lose an election.
Jackson said it will have the opposite effect because it “opens the
floodgates to exactly the type of troubling election-related litigation
the court purportedly wants to avoid.”
She said it will allow candidates who lost their election in a landslide
to file lawsuits after the election is over. Though the justices debated
in October how the court should decide if any metrics should govern
candidates’ standing, Roberts’ ruling did not suggest one.
“All he (any candidate) must do is assert that an election rule somehow
deprived him of a fair process — even if that rule played no role in the
election’s outcome or otherwise caused him harm,” Jackson wrote.
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