COVID-Related Election Litigation Tracker

Case Details

This database consolidates and tracks litigation concerning the effect of the pandemic on election law. The purpose of this tool is to provide an interactive list of relevant cases that can be searched by issue, court, status, and jurisdiction.

Case Details

 

Donald J. Trump for President v. Simon

Closed

Donald J. Trump for President v. Simon, No. A20-1362 (Minn. Sup. Ct.)

  Case Summary President Trump's campaign sought the sequestration of votes received by mail after 8pm on election day, or by hand after 3pm, alleging that Minn. Stat. § 203B.08, subd. 3 and §§ 204B.45–46 preclude counting such votes, even though the Secretary of State of Minnesota established a rule pursuant to a consent decree between the Secretary and private parties that election officials will accept and count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked on or before Election Day but received by 8 p.m. within 7 days of Election Day. After the 8th Circuit's decision in Carson ordered sequestration, petitioners moved to dismiss but the intervenors opposed and asked Minnesota Supreme Court to decide the merits under state law.
Filed 10/28/2020
State Minnesota
Type of Court State
Status Closed
Last Updated 05/13/2021
Issue Tag(s) Vote-by-Mail (Mail Voting Deadlines (for Applying, Receiving, Postmark))
Authority To Act (State Separation of Powers, Elections Clause)
Dispositive Ruling(s) 10/28/2020: Other
10/29/2020: Order/Ruling, The judgement of the Minnesota district court that Secretary of State Simon could extend the deadline to receive absenttee ballots is reversed and remanded. The court found that the Secretary extended the deadline for receipt of ballots without legislative authorization; thus the court orders the reversal of the district court's denial of preliminary injunction and remand so that the district court can enter an injunction to segregate and preserve all ballots received after Election Day.
Creative Commons License  Covid-Related Election Litigation Tracker by the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.