Bost et al. v. Illinois State Board of Elections et al. (24-568)
- Term
- OT 2025
- Argued
- 2025-10-08
- Decided
- 2026-01-14
- Vote
- 7-2 for Bost
- Opinion
- Justice Roberts
- Majority
- Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh
- Dissent
- Jackson, Sotomayor
The case in brief
Facts
Illinois law requires election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day and arrive within two weeks afterward. In 2022, Congressman Michael Bost and two nominees for Presidential elector, Laura Pollastrini and Susan Sweeney, sued the Illinois State Board of Elections. They claimed that counting ballots that arrive after election day violates federal law. Bost said the rule would cost his campaign extra time and money, such as for poll watchers, and could shrink his margin or cost him the election. The district court dismissed the case, and the Seventh Circuit agreed, ruling that the candidates lacked standing, meaning the legal right to bring the lawsuit.
Question
Does a candidate have the legal right ("standing") under Article III of the Constitution to challenge a state law about counting mail-in ballots that arrive after election day in his own election?
Conclusion
Bost won by a 7-2 vote in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, and the Court reversed the Seventh Circuit and sent the case back. The Court held that Bost, as a candidate, has standing because candidates have a personal interest in a fair and lawful election that differs from voters' general interest, and they need not show they are likely to lose. Justice Barrett, joined by Justice Kagan, agreed with the result but said Bost has standing because of money his campaign would spend, not simply because he is a candidate. Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, dissented, arguing that candidates should meet the same proof-of-harm rules as anyone else.
Opinion of the Court
Authored by Justice Roberts (12,365 words total).
Volume 607 U. S. Part 1 Pages 71–106
THE SUPREME COURT January 14, 2026
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BOST et al. v. ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the seventh circuit No. 24–568. Argued October 8, 2025—Decided January 14, 2026 Illinois law requires election offcials to count mail-in ballots postmarked or certifed no later than election day and received within two weeks of election day. Congressman Michael Bost and two other political candidates fled a lawsuit claiming that counting ballots received after election day violates federal law. They principally contended that doing so conficts with 2 U. S. C. § 7 and 3 U. S. C. § 1, which set election day as the Tuesday following the frst Monday in November. The district court dismissed the case, and the Seventh Circuit affrmed on the ground that petitioners lacked standing. Held: As a candidate for offce, Congressman Bost has standing to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election. Pp. 76–83. (a) Under Article III of the Constitution, plaintiffs must have a “personal stake” in a case to have standing to sue. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U. S. 367, 379. An unlawful election rule can injure a candidate in several ways: It might cause him to lose the election, require him to expend additional resources, or decrease his vote share and damage his reputation. But winning, and doing so as inexpensively and decisively as possible, are not a candidate's only interests in an election. Candidates also have an interest in a fair process. Candidates seek to represent the people, and their interest in that prize cannot be severed from their interest in the electoral process. Win or lose, candidates suffer when the process departs from the law. The harm to candidates from an unfair and inaccurate election is not common to all. While voters also have a general interest in an accurate vote tally, a candidate's interest differs in kind. Those who spend time and resources seeking to claim the right to voice the will of the people have “an undeniably different—and more particularized—interest” in knowing what that will is. Hotze v. Hudspeth, 16 F. 4th 1121, 1126 (Oldham, J., dissenting). Rules that undermine the integrity of the electoral process also undermine the winner's political legitimacy. The counting of unlawful votes—or discarding of lawful ones—erodes public confdence in election
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Syllabus results and the elected representative. “[R]eputational harms” are classic Article III injuries. TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. 413, 425. And they are particularly concrete for those whose very jobs depend on the support of the people. Pp. 76–79. (b) Candidates do not need to show a substantial risk that a rule will cause them to lose the election or prevent them from achieving a legally signifcant vote threshold in order to have standing. Requiring such a showing could channel many election disputes to shortly before election day or after. Only then will many candidates be able to predict with any certainty that a rule will be outcome determinative. Yet the Court has repeatedly emphasized that lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election. Such latebreaking, court-ordered rule changes can result in voter confusion and undermine confdence in the integrity of electoral processes. The democratic consequences can be worse if courts intervene only after votes have been counted. Counting frst and ruling upon legality afterwards is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires. Premising standing on a candidate's risk of election loss or failure to achieve a certain vote threshold would also convert Article III judges into political prognosticators and “invite[ ] fndings on matters as to which neither judges nor anyone else can have any confdence.” Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684, 711 (internal quotation marks omitted). “[A]ccurately predicting electoral outcomes is not” a “simple” endeavor. Id., at 712. And the limits of federal courts' jurisdiction do not rest upon such “unstable ground outside judicial expertise.” Id., at 713. Nor would requiring candidates to plead a substantial risk of harm to their vote share leave courts on any surer footing. Such an approach would force judges to assess whether an election rule is likely to disadvantage a particular candidate—determinations judges are no better qualifed to make than assessing a candidate's likelihood of winning or losing. Candidates would also have to plead and prove that voters who take advantage of the challenged rule will favor their rivals, which may require divulging information about political vulnerabilities. Faced with that prospect, many candidates are sure to wait until after votes are counted to sue. Article III does not require this result. Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns. 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. Pp. 79–82.
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