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By Gabe Whisnant
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Justice Elena Kagan broke with the Supreme Court’s liberal justices on Wednesday in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, which revived a Republican challenge to an Illinois law that allows the counting of mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, a provision long criticized by President Donald Trump.
The justices ruled 7–2 that Rep. Mike Bost, R‑Ill., has standing to sue, even though the late‑arriving ballots were unlikely to have affected his decisive victory.
Why It Matters
Illinois officials had warned that letting the case proceed could spur a wave of election challenges and disrupt ballot counting, while Bost argued that the margin of his win should not determine his right to be in court. State law permits ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted for up to two weeks, a practice also used in more than a dozen other states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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What To Know
Chief Justice John Roberts was joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett filed a concurring opinion, which was joined by the liberal Kagan. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent that was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Jackson and Sotomayor warned that allowing any candidate to sue “opens the floodgates to exactly the type of troubling election‑related litigation the Court purportedly wants to avoid.”
The Trump administration backed Bost, echoing the president’s assertions that extended ballot counting erodes public confidence in elections.
What People Are Saying
Bost said Wednesday on the House floor: "The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled that I have standing to proceed with my lawsuit challenging Illinois’ election law allowing for the counting of mail-in ballots two weeks after Election Day. We have won this initial battle, but the fight for election integrity continues. Stay tuned for more information on where we go from here!"
Barrett and Kagan said they would have allowed Boast to sue but not any candidate for office: “I cannot join the Court’s creation of a bespoke standing rule for candidates. Elections are important, but so are many things in life."
Roberts wrote for the majority, “Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless of 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.”
What Happens Next
The Court is expected to take up the broader question of whether states may continue counting late‑arriving mail ballots later this spring.
Updates: 1/14/26, 11:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated with new information.
Updates: 1/14/26, 5:16 p.m. ET: This article was updated with new information and remarks.
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