The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday denied the Nevada Green Party’s effort to get its candidates on the 2024 election ballot in the battleground state.
Represented by Donald Trump impeachment defense lawyer Jay Sekulow, the party sought emergency relief from the justices for ballot access in Nevada, where its presidential candidate Jill Stein could draw votes from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
The Green Party challenged a Nevada Supreme Court ruling from Sept. 6 that said its candidates can’t be on the ballot because of a paperwork error, even though the party made the error after receiving incorrect information from the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office. The state high court ordered the district court to enter an injunction, which it did that day, instructing the secretary of state not to place the party’s candidates on the ballot.
In its unsigned order Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court left in place the state high court’s decision.
The Nevada State Democratic Party and the Nevada secretary of state both opposed the Green Party’s effort at the Supreme Court.
In swing states in particular, third-party candidates can be crucial to the outcome, with the Green Party potentially winning some votes that would otherwise go to the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Last month, a divided Supreme Court partially sided with Republicans in their effort to enforce an Arizona state law requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voting. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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