Just hours after Trump’s law firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, withdrew from a Pennsylvania case (under pressure from The Lincoln Project’s cancel culture), and a just a day after the Trump campaign won a minor victory in the multifaceted post-election litigation ongoing in Pennsylvania (that illegally cast ballots must be thrown out), the PA Superior Court has denied a Republican lawsuit challenging the state’s ballot receipt deadline.
The 3rd Circuit upheld a lower court order rejecting a constitutional challenge to PA’s extended, post-Election Day deadline for absentee ballots.
“…we do so with commitment to a proposition indisputable in our democratic process: that the lawfully cast vote of every citizen must count.”
The 3rd Circuit agreed with the district judge that the voters who brought the case lacked standing, and also held that the district judge was right to deny last-minute injunctive relief right before the election on the grounds it would upend the status quo for voters.
IV. CONCLUSION
We do not decide today whether the Deadline Extension or the Presumption of Timeliness are proper exercises of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s lawmaking authority, delegated by the U.S. Constitution, to regulate federal elections. Nor do we evaluate the policy wisdom of those two features of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling. We hold only that when voters cast their ballots under a state’s facially lawful election rule and in accordance with instructions from the state’s election officials, private citizens lack Article III standing to enjoin the counting of those ballots on the grounds that the source of the rule was the wrong state organ or that doing so dilutes their votes or constitutes differential treatment of voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Further, and independent of our holding on standing, we hold that the District Court did not err in denying Plaintiffs’ motion for injunctive relief out of concern for the settled expectations of voters and election officials. We will affirm the District Court’s denial of Plaintiffs’ emergency motion for a TRO or preliminary injunction.
However, a separate challenge remains pending before SCOTUS, though, so the fate of those ballots remains unsettled.
Full Opinion below: