A victory won by the Socialist Workers Party in a political rights lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections in 1979 became a central focus of the discussion at an Oct. 8 U.S. Supreme Court hearing.
At issue was a case brought by Illinois Republican Congressman Michael Bost, who is appealing a lower court decision that he has no legal standing for his challenge to a state law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to 14 days after the election. The lower court ruled Bost couldn’t sue because he was assured of winning the election, as he had done in 2024 by a wide margin.
“You pointed to the Illinois Socialist Workers case,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said to Bost’s attorney, Paul Clement. “They had zero chance of winning the election.”
Does that mean the SWP’s challenge to Illinois’ petitioning requirements should have been thrown out? Illinois Solicitor General Jane Notz implied the answer was yes, stubbornly insisting that to mount a challenge you had to face “a substantial risk of harm.”
“What you’re sketching out for us is a potential disaster,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in response to Notz’s comments. It would force courts to guess whether a candidate was likely to win or not, he said, to judge if they had standing to challenge the election law. He said he supported a different standard.
Referring to Bost, Roberts said, “Look, he’s a candidate. He’s challenging a rule in the election. You know, isn’t that enough?”
In the SWP case, the Supreme Court held the party had standing to bring a case that struck down an Illinois law imposing discriminatory petitioning requirements on the party and other candidates running independently of the Democrats and Republicans. The ruling in that case advanced constitutional rights.
Clement was asked if he thought political parties that are considered to have little chance of winning, like the SWP, should have standing to challenge election laws. He said yes, “I stand in locked shoulder with the Socialist Workers Party.”
“Those are interesting bedfellows you’re taking,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor interjected, as if sharing a concern for equal justice for all was something to be sneered at.
“But I’m delighted to have those bedfellows because that’s the way we think about elections in this country,” Clement replied, backing broad access to the ballot. “We don’t think just give me the bottom-line result.”
The Illinois law overturned by the Supreme Court in the SWP case required the party’s candidates for local office obtain signatures equal to 5% of the number of votes cast at the last election, far more than required for statewide office. The court ruled the law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The 1979 ruling was not only a victory for the SWP. It “can make it easier for the labor movement to nominate and run candidates who truly represent working people,” the Militant wrote at the time.
The court has yet to rule on whether Bost has standing to pursue his case.