Supreme Court rules states can count late-arriving mailed ballots, rejecting Trump-led challenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.
The 5-4 decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day. The outcome spares officials the headache of changing their ballot rules just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
In just over half those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to ballots cast by military and overseas voters.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the court’s majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices.
The legal challenge was part of Trump’s broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.
The court heard arguments in March in a case from Mississippi pitting the state against Trump’s Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. At issue was whether federal law sets a single Election Day that requires ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials.
The federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of the election and are postmarked by Election Day.
Supreme court will weigh Trump-backed Republican push to enforce Arizona voting laws
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a Republican push to enforce strict Arizona voting laws passed in the swing state after the 2020 election.
The high court has allowed some similar rules to take effect temporarily before, including Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for state and local elections and a Virginia purge of voter rolls that the state said was aimed at keeping noncitizens from voting.
President Donald Trump’s Republican administration joined the appeal after lower courts found the measures violated federal voting laws.
The high court is expected to hear arguments in the fall and hand down an opinion after the midterm elections.
The Republican-controlled legislature passed the laws in 2022, part of a wave of similar proposals around the country after Trump falsely claimed widespread voter fraud was responsible for his narrow defeat there to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump reclaimed the state in 2024, helping secure his return to the White House.
The case reached the Supreme Court’s emergency docket in 2024. The justices gave the GOP a partial victory, allowing Arizona to require proof of citizenship for registration in state and local elections but not federal races.
Also that year, the high court allowed Virginia to continue a purge of voter rolls shortly before the election.
Citizenship is required to vote across the country, and people must attest they are citizens under penalty of perjury to register. Arizona is among only a handful of states that require additional proof, like a driver’s license or passport. Data indicates that voting by noncitizens is rare.
Arizona tried to impose proof requirements for national elections in 2013, but the law was struck down by the Supreme Court. Now, people can register as “federal only” voters without providing proof of citizenship, but Arizona requires additional proof for state and local election participation.
Supreme Court won’t revive Alan Dershowitz’s $300 million suit against CNN
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court refused Monday to revive a $300 million defamation lawsuit filed against CNN over its coverage of a prominent attorney’s remarks made while defending President Donald Trump during his 2020 impeachment.
The majority declined to take up the case in a brief, unexplained order. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented, calling on the court to reconsider the legal standards for public figures who claim defamation.
Alan Dershowitz said the news network aired only a portion of the comment made during his defense of the president, distorting his meaning to make him look like he’d “lost his mind,” according to court documents.
The network said that multiple outlets had interpreted his remarks in a similar way, and Dershowitz couldn’t show CNN was trying to mischaracterize what he said.
In his appeal, Dershowitz had urged the court to reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The landmark First Amendment case that made it harder for public figures to win libel lawsuits because it requires proof that an outlet knowingly published something false, or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.
Dershowitz, a retired Harvard Law School professor and legal commentator, was part of Trump’s defense team during his impeachment trial over allegations that Trump wanted political favors from Ukraine in return for U.S. military aid. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
Dershowitz responded to a question at one point by saying, “the only thing that would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were somehow illegal.” Providing arms to Ukraine, he said, isn’t illegal.
He alleged that CNN only played what he said moments later: “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest and, mostly, they are right, your election is in the public interest, and if the president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
Dershowitz said the edit made it seem like he was arguing a president could avoid impeachment for illegal acts as long as he was doing it to get reelected – a concept his original suit called “preposterous and foolish on its face.”
CNN countered by saying it did air his full remarks during its live coverage, and invited him on twice more to expand on his meaning.
Lower courts tossed out the suit, finding that Dershowitz hadn’t shown CNN acted with “actual malice” in its reporting, making it fall short of the standard set by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
High court rules constitutional privacy protections apply to cellphone users location history
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court held Monday that constitutional privacy protections extend to cellphone location information, ruling in the case of a bank robber whose identity was discovered through a geofence warrant.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the 6-3 court that people don’t forfeit expectations of privacy even when they opt into Google’s location history.
“A cellphone user is not to be viewed as sharing private information with third parties—which then can be freely passed on to the government—just by doing the ordinary things cellphone users do,” Kagan wrote.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in dissent that Okello Chatrie had no expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turned over to Google.
The decision is the court’s latest effort to apply a constitutional provision ratified in 1791 to technology the nation’s founders could not have envisioned.
Police obtained a geofence warrant after a bank robbery in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, and used it to locate cellphones that were near the bank around the time it was robbed in May 2019.
One of those phones belonged to Chatrie, who had eluded the police until they turned to the powerful technological tool.
The warrant kick-started the investigation. After determining that Chatrie was among those near the Call Federal Credit Union in Midlothian at the time, police obtained a search warrant for his home. They found nearly $100,000 in cash, including bills wrapped in bands signed by the bank teller.
Chatrie pleaded guilty to robbing the bank and was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison. His lawyers argued on appeal that none of the evidence should have been used against him.
They challenged the warrant as a violation of his privacy because it allowed authorities to gather the location history of people near the bank without having any evidence they had anything to do with the robbery. Prosecutors argued that Chatrie had no expectation of privacy because he voluntarily opted into Google’s location history.
The Supreme Court did not decide Monday whether the search complied with the Fourth Amendment, which bans unreasonable searches and seizures. It sent the case back to a lower court for more work.
A federal judge had ruled that the search violated Chatrie’s rights, but allowed the evidence to be used because the officer who applied for the warrant reasonably believed he was acting properly.
The federal appeals court in Richmond upheld the conviction in a fractured ruling. In a separate case, the federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that geofence warrants “are general warrants categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.”
