The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected one of President Trump’s election lawsuits on Thursday, saying that the president would have to work the case through the lower courts first.
In a 4-3 decision in which conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joined the court’s liberal judges, the court ruled that Wisconsin law required that Trump’s suit first be filed in a circuit court before it could be taken up by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Wisconsin law “provides that these actions should be filed in the circuit court, and spells out details procedures for ensuring their orderly and sift disposition,” the filing reads.
“We do well as a judicial body to abide by time-tested judicial norms, even—and maybe especially—in high-profile cases,” Hagedorn wrote in a concurring opinion. “Following the law governing challenges to election results is no threat to the rule of law.”
While acknowledging that “the circuit court should examine the record presented during the canvasses to make factual findings where legal challenges to the vote turn on questions of fact,” dissenting Justice Patience Drake Roggensack argued that the high court could take action on the case while the circuit courts completed their fact-finding instead of dismissing it.
“Four justices of this court are ignoring that there are significant time constraints that may preclude our deciding significant legal issues that cry out for resolution by the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Roggensack added.
In the lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, the Trump campaign sought to throw out more than 221,000 ballots and shift President-elect Joe Biden’s current 21,000-vote lead into a deficit. At the time, campaign lawyer Jim Troupis told the Washington Examiner that he was “certainly confident [the case was] not going to be thrown out.”
Troupis said the Trump campaign would bring the case to the circuit courts after the high court failed to take the case.
“We welcome the direction of the Supreme Court to file in Dane and Milwaukee Counties as we pursue making certain that only legal votes count in Wisconsin — and we will immediately do so. It was clear from their writings that the court recognizes the seriousness of these issues, and we look forward to taking the next step. We fully expect to be back in front of the Supreme Court very soon,” Troupis said. “As I have said before, we will continue fighting on behalf of Wisconsinites and the American people to defend their right to a free and fair election. The only way to do that is by helping to restore integrity and transparency in our elections.”
Wisconsin completed its recount of the election results on Sunday. After the dust settled, the recount ended up expanding Biden’s lead by 132 votes.
With a margin in the tens of thousands, there were very few people who expected a recount to shift the tide in Trump’s favor. Of the 31 statewide recounts since 2000, only three changed the outcome of an election, and each of those races had margins fewer than 300 votes.
Wisconsin certified its election results on Monday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Gov. Tony Evers authorized the state’s electors to vote for Biden.
A number of lawsuits are still playing out in Wisconsin courts regarding the election. The conservative Wisconsin Voters Alliance filed a suit against election officials to block the certification of the results. Gov. Tony Evers’s attorneys asked the state’s Supreme Court to dismiss the case. A suit filed by a Wisconsin resident alleged that ballots put in drop boxes were illegal and cannot be counted, according to the Associated Press.
The electoral math currently sends Biden to the White House with 306 electoral votes and more than 81 million votes total — the most votes ever earned by a presidential candidate.
