Court rejects lingering 2020 election challenge case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday said it will not hear a case out of Pennsylvania related to the 2020 election, a dispute that had lingered while similar election challenges had already been rejected by the justices.
The high court directed a lower court to dismiss the case as moot.
The justices in February, after President Joe Biden's inauguration, had rejected a handful of cases related to the 2020 election. In the case the court rejected Monday, however, the court had called for additional briefing that was not complete until the end of March.
The case involved a federal court challenge to a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision requiring election officials to receive and count mailed-in ballots that arrived up to three days after the election. More broadly, however, the case concerned whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out.
The Democratic National Committee was among those that argued the case should be rejected as moot because the 2020 election is over. Those that brought the case said the justices should hear it because the issues involved are important and recurring.
The court had previously rejected other cases that had involved the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots. Three of the court's conservative justices dissented, saying they would have taken up the cases.
The genesis of the cases were changes Pennsylvania lawmakers made to the state's election laws in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite the changes, lawmakers left in place a Nov. 3 deadline to receive absentee ballots. Democrats sued, and Pennsylvania's highest court cited the ongoing pandemic and United States Postal Service delays in extending the deadline for mailed-in ballots to be received.
Wanda Murren, the communications director for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said Monday the elections agency is considering what to do about those ballots now, and whether they should be added to the final tally. In all, just over 10,000 ballots were received by elections officials after polls closed on Election Day, Nov. 3, but before 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6.
"We are pleased that yet another court ruling has affirmed the accuracy and integrity of Pennsylvania's November 2020 election," Murren said.
More than 600 of the ballots received during those three days had no postmark or an illegible postmark.
The 10,000 ballots would not have altered the outcome of the presidential election in the state, which former President Donald Trump lost by some 80,000 votes.
Appeal over pickup seized at border rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a Kentucky man whose pickup truck was seized at the Mexican border and held by the federal government for more than two years.
The justices did not comment in leaving in place a lower-court ruling against the man, Gerardo Serrano. He was asking the court to force the government to hold a prompt hearing when it takes people's property under forfeiture laws.
Those laws allow the government to seize property without ever having to prove it was used for illicit purposes.
Serrano was crossing the border at Eagle Pass, Texas, on his way to visit relatives in 2015 when federal border agents searched and then took possession of his Ford F-250 pickup.
The agents justified the seizure because they found "munitions of war" in the vehicle, five bullets — but no gun. Serrano said he angered the agents by taking picture of the border crossing on his cellphone and then refusing to hand over the device's password, although he said he deleted the photos.
He didn't get the truck back until 2017.
Justices won't hear Tennessee prisoners' hepatitis C case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is leaving in place an appeals court decision that upheld Tennessee's rationing of life-saving hepatitis C drugs to prisoners as constitutional.
The high court on Monday said it would not take the case. As is typical, the court did not comment in turning away the case.
The 2-1 appeals court decision last August found that officials did not act with deliberate indifference to prisoners' medical needs and it was reasonable to prioritize the sickest patients for treatment given the Tennessee Department of Correction's limited resources. In a dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Lee Gilman wrote that officials may not refuse to treat a patient with a serious medical need "merely to avoid paying the bill."
Before 2011, there was no good treatment for hepatitis C, but that year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved new antiviral drugs that are highly effective against the liver-damaging virus, curing most people after two or three months. Although the cost of the antivirals has dropped sharply since 2011, Tennessee says the average cost for treating a prisoner is still $17,000.
Other states have also grappled with how to provide the expensive treatment.
