Supreme Court justices are not subject to elections, but thanks to a trio of cases the high court will hear in the upcoming term, their rulings may significantly impact the midterm elections in 2026 and beyond.
Among the dozens of cases the Supreme Court will hear in the coming months, three cases it has agreed to hear could have wider ramifications for campaigns, elections, and who controls the House of Representatives. Two of the cases have been scheduled for October hearings, while the other case has yet to be scheduled but will be heard by the justices in the upcoming term long before the midterm elections in November 2026.
Bost v. Illinois
The first case the Supreme Court will hear in the next term, which could significantly affect forthcoming elections, deals with whether federal candidates have standing to challenge state regulations of the federal elections they are running in. With Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) sued Illinois officials over a state law that allows mail-in ballots to be collected 14 days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
The case the justices will hear in oral arguments on Oct. 8 does not concern the legality of the Illinois mail-in ballot law, but whether Bost is able to sue, as a federal candidate, over those state election laws. The lower district and appeals courts rejected Bost’s assertions of standing, leading him to the Supreme Court for a question that could either open up or shut down various election procedure challenges by candidates.
Bost argues the lower court’s rulings were “flatly wrong” and that “no one has more of a concrete and particularized interest in the rules governing an election than the candidates running in it.” The Illinois Board of Elections argues Bost has failed to show any material harm to him caused by the law, and that the lawsuit should not hold up.
Honest Elections Project Vice President Chad Ennis told the Washington Examiner that if the Supreme Court upholds the lower courts’ rulings and finds no standing for candidates to sue, it would have “wide implications.”
“It makes these things harder to challenge, almost impossible, and that’s really the problem if a candidate doesn’t have standing to sue on election rules. Who does at that point? It gets really hard to think of how anyone can get in court,” Ennis said.
“It would be far, far reaching to find a candidate does not have standing,” he added.
Should the justices rule in favor of Bost, ruling that candidates have standing to challenge laws such as the 14-day post-election mail-in period, it could allow candidates more avenues to challenge election statutes in states.
Ennis believes that, should the high court rule in favor of Bost, it could help the issue of late-arriving ballots make its way to the Supreme Court in the future, with the argument that extending the deadline past Election Day violates federal law.
“The Constitution gives Congress the ability to set the time, place, and manner of federal elections,” Ennis said. “If you keep collecting ballots two weeks later, you’ve gone well past Election Day and it’s not Election Day anymore, it’s election month.”
While a case on the legality of mail-in ballot deadlines stretching beyond Election Day itself could take years to reach the Supreme Court, the finding of standing for challenging election procedures would immediately affect challenges leveled as Nov. 3, 2026, marches closer.
Louisiana v. Callais
A week after the Supreme Court hears arguments in Bost v. Illinois, it will hear arguments in Louisiana v. Callais. The oral arguments slated for Oct. 15 will center on whether Louisiana’s creation of a second minority-majority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendment, a ruling that could have implications beyond the Pelican State.
The case already held a first round of oral arguments earlier this year. Still, the justices punted on a decision and scheduled a second round of oral arguments around a sharper question. The new question the justices want answers to from the parties has teed up the case as potentially being the decision where the Supreme Court strikes down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Conversely, the high court could also uphold the provision of the VRA and rule that creating a second minority-majority district is constitutional.
Section 2 of the VRA and the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles, which set the current parameters for Section 2 lawsuits, have paved the way for the creation of court-ordered minority-majority congressional districts for minority groups that make up a significant amount of a state’s population. Because of the significant black minority populations in the southern states and the Democratic Party’s dominance with black voters, Section 2 lawsuits have led to the creation of various deep blue districts in states like Louisiana and Alabama.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s proposed congressional map violated Section 2 of the VRA, mandating the creation of a second black majority district for the state. The 5-4 decision in Allen v. Milligan did not strike down Section 2, but Louisiana, in its brief to the Supreme Court for the Callais case, told the justices it believes Section 2’s “race-based mandate is unconstitutional.”
Louisiana, whose GOP-dominated legislature created the second black-majority district after a court order, said in its brief to the court that it is seeking clarity on how to proceed with redistricting. While the court’s ruling may not overturn Section 2, the Pelican State wants to avoid endless court battles over legislative maps, which should only change once a decade.
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“In all events, the States desperately need clarity that so far has been absent from this Court’s redistricting cases. Absent that clarity, nothing will change in the extraordinary expenditure of time, money, and resources that the States (and the courts) face after every redistricting cycle,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in her brief to the court.
If the high court strikes down Section 2’s racial gerrymandering requirements, it could set off another wave of redistricting and net Republicans seats in various southern states. With the tight battle for the House of Representatives, it could be the difference between Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in the next Congress.
NRSC v. FEC
While the Supreme Court has yet to schedule its arguments for NRSC v. FEC, the justices’ ruling is slated to have the most immediate effect on campaigns. The Federal Election Commission’s coordinated spending limits between political parties and candidates have remained in place despite the Supreme Court lifting different limits as unconstitutional in recent years, but the upcoming NRSC case could open the floodgates to more coordinated spending.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign wing, argues to the Supreme Court that the limits the FEC places on coordinating spending between political parties and candidates violate that party’s First Amendment rights. The NRSC also rejects the claims by the FEC that the limits work to prevent corruption.
“Since their inception, these coordinated party expenditure limits have been a form of speech rationing in search of a rationale. Given that they were enacted to reduce what incumbents saw as wasteful and excessive campaign spending by political parties, the government has spent decades casting about for a way to recharacterize them as an anti-corruption measure,” the NRSC’s brief to the high court said.
“But because no one seriously claims that parties are trying to bribe their candidates, the government has been forced to rely on a quid pro quo-by-circumvention defense—namely, that the limits will somehow prevent donors from laundering bribes to candidates through the political parties,” the NRSC added, arguing the Supreme Court has previously rejected this rationale.
The Supreme Court striking down the limits on how parties coordinate spending with candidates could flood increasingly expensive campaigns with more money, thanks to the political parties.
“If you lift the limits, it would allow more money to come into the system, and it would allow the candidates’ parties to receive more money, and it would allow the parties to spend more money,” Dan Greenberg, senior research fellow at the Cato Institute, told the Washington Examiner.
With the Democratic and Republican Parties becoming weaker in recent years, lifting the limits on coordinated spending could give the political parties some power.
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“We live in an era of American history where parties are incredibly weak, and I think that if these regulations were struck down, it would certainly help parties to become relatively stronger,” Greenberg said.
Decisions in all three cases are expected by the end of June 2026, but cases argued early in the term tend to be decided months earlier than June. The Supreme Court could also take up additional election-related cases for the term as it continues to agree on cases for this term over the coming months.