ALL CANDIDATES CAN CHALLENGE ELECTION LAWS
Supreme Court Bost v. Illinois Bd of Elections
C.J. Roberts:
***While voters also have a general interest in an accurate vote tally, a candidate’s interest differs in kind. Those who spend time and resources seeking to claim the right to voice the will of the people have “an undeniably different—and more particularized—interest” in knowing what that will is. ***
JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR joins, dissenting.
Under our standing precedents, this is an easy case. Article III requires plaintiffs to assert and establish an “injury in fact”—i.e., the “invasion of a legally protected interest” that is both “concrete and particularized” and “actual or imminent.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992) (internal quotation marks omitted). Congressman Bost has failed to allege that the election-related law he seeks to challenge has caused him to suffer any injury that satisfies those requirements. A majority of the Court nevertheless concludes that Bost has standing to sue based solely on his status as a candidate for office. The Court thereby subtly shifts from our longstanding actual-injury rule to a presumption that certain kinds of plaintiffs are sufficiently aggrieved to satisfy Article III standing, regardless of whether they will experience any particularized harm. In my view, this dubious departure from settled law disregards both the equal treatment of litigants and judicial restraint.
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