Wisconsin Supreme Court declines to hear Trump campaign challenge to election results
By Rosalind Helderman
The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday declined to take up a challenge to the presidential election filed by Trump’s campaign, ruling that under state law, Trump should have sought a hearing first in a lower-level court.
Trump’s campaign could still seek to challenge Biden’s more than 20,000-vote lead in the state in Wisconsin circuit court. But the refusal of the state’s highest court to take up Trump’s petition is a new blow to Trump’s floundering efforts to overturn the election — and a particularly stinging rebuke, given that conservatives hold a 4-to-3 majority on the elected panel.
One conservative member of the panel, Brian Hagedorn, joined the court’s three more liberal members in declining to take the case.
In a concurring opinion, he wrote, “We do well as a judicial body to abide by time-tested judicial norms, even — and maybe especially — in high-profile cases. Following the law governing challenges to election results is no threat to the rule of law.”
Hagedorn wrote that he had determined the court should decline to take the case so the Trump campaign could “promptly exercise” its right to seek action in a lower court.
Trump’s campaign had argued the matter was of such pressing and urgent concern that it should be considered immediately by the high court. In the petition, it argued that more than 220,000 ballots cast in the state’s two most Democratic counties were improperly accepted by election officials and should be thrown out.
The campaign did not allege that individual voters committed fraud or engaged in wrongdoing, but rather that election officials misinterpreted state law regarding several large categories of ballots.
That included all ballots cast early and in person in the two counties. The campaign challenged the practices, even though they were identical to those in place statewide and were unchanged since prior to the 2016 election, which Trump won and did not contest.
The state Supreme Court agreed that Wisconsin law allows for a challenge from a person who loses after a recount — which Trump sought and confirmed his defeat in the state by Biden. But the state high court said the law requires that the challenge be filed first in circuit court.
Under state law, a candidate gets five days to file such a challenge, a window that will close on Monday.
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