The Supreme Court is increasingly being pulled into the upcoming presidential contest.
With a week to go until Election Day, the justices now have four election-related applications on their emergency docket.
Former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made two requests to take him off the ballot in the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is challenging who can cast provisional ballots in Pennsylvania, with potentially thousands of votes hanging in the balance. Meanwhile, Republican officials in Virginia are asking to remove more than 1,600 people from the voter rolls over accusations they are noncitizens.
The disputes are just some of the dozens of legal battles playing out in courts across the country surrounding this year’s presidential contest. Some of those cases, as well as new ones filed after Election Day, could ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
“I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process. And so, the Supreme Court has to be prepared to respond — if — if that should be necessary,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted during an August interview with CBS.
Jackson is the only sitting justice who was not on the court when it rejected challenges to the 2020 election results, when former President Trump baselessly contested his loss to President Biden.
Four years later, many legal observers expect the high court will similarly be drawn into this cycle’s contest between Trump and Vice President Harris.
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