Marc Elias, the Democratic Party’s most prominent election lawyer, suffered a string of crushing court losses in 2025.
Elias’s legal firm, the Elias Law Group, has been at the forefront of lawfare combatting election integrity efforts, enjoying considerable success in these fights over the past few years.
However, this year, Elias lost several high-profile battles centered on congressional redistricting, allowing foreign funding to influence ballot initiatives, and removing proof-of-citizenship requirements in the voting registration process.
Further devastating for the left-wing celebrity attorney, two of the decisions were handed down by Obama-appointed judges and two came from a liberal-majority state Supreme Court.
Bothfeld and Felton v. Wisconsin Elections Commission
Elias lodged two similar suits seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional district boundaries before the battleground state’s 2026 midterm elections, claiming that the current congressional maps were the result of partisan gerrymandering that favors Republicans and discriminates against Democrats.
Guided by lead plaintiffs Elizabeth Bothfeld and Kate Felton, two registered Democrats residing in Wisconsin, the lawsuits alleged that Democratic voters are deprived of fair representation in violation of the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee.
Both of the challenges, which intended to stop the Wisconsin Elections Commission from conducting races with the maps as they currently are, were swatted down by the state’s liberal-leaning Supreme Court.
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Liberal justices outnumber conservatives on the judicial body 4-3. Democrats had hoped that the liberal wing of the court would grant them an opportunity to change the state’s congressional lines and flip some House seats under friendlier maps.
In back-to-back rulings on June 25, the high court unanimously rejected the Elias Law Group’s requests to hear the pair of petitions, denying direct review of the gerrymandering claims. The justices did not offer an explanation as to why they would not take on either case.
The denials effectively left Wisconsin’s existing congressional maps in place, marking a significant setback for the Democratic Party’s attempts to alter the swing state’s political landscape ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
However, one of the cases will be heard by a select group of judges on the Wisconsin Circuit Court after the Elias Law Group refiled Bothfeld v. Wis. Election Comm’n II, using a statutory mechanism that requires the state’s Supreme Court to pick a three-judge panel as part of a special judicial review process.
Out of the trio appointed, Judges Julie Genovese and Mark Sanders previously endorsed Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Susan Crawford when she was a liberal candidate vying for an open seat on the bench in April of this year.
When contacted for comment, the Elias Law Group pointed the Washington Examiner to previous statements from the firm’s partner Abha Khanna, who is arguing the Bothfeld case, telling reporters the appointments are a “positive development.”
“There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections,” Khanna told NOTUS, adding, “This can be decided without any fact-finding at all. The court can decide it as a matter of law, and then we can proceed quickly to a remedial map.”
Still, the panel’s decision, whichever way they may rule, could come too late, as the elections commission says it needs the congressional maps to be finalized by March 1.
At a Dec. 12 scheduling conference, the Elias Law Group pushed for the panel to meet that deadline. Genovese reportedly pushed back. “We’ll decide them when we can decide them,” she said of the motion to issue a ruling or dismiss the case without additional arguments.
Equality State Policy Center v. Gray
Elias also unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of Wyoming’s election security law, H.B. 156, which requires voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and state residency when registering to vote in local elections.
Judge Scott Skavdahl, an Obama appointee, dismissed the lawsuit brought by the Elias Law Group on behalf of Equality State Policy Center, finding that the plaintiffs lacked constitutional standing.
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Under Title III of the U.S. Constitution, in order to establish grounds to sue, plaintiffs must demonstrate “a concrete and particularized injury,” one that is “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s conduct and that a favorable court decision would redress the injury.
Because the plaintiffs did not clear this procedural threshold, the complaint was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the case could be brought again.
In a scathing 17-page opinion, issued on July 22, Skavdahl found that the Equality State Policy Center failed to show that it suffered a specific injury and that it has a personal stake in the matter. Plaintiffs did not prove that “at least one identified member [of the organization] had suffered or would suffer harm” from H.B. 156’s registration requirements, Skavdahl wrote.
Skavdahl noted that the Equality State Policy Center, a coalition of social justice-oriented groups in Wyoming offering voter outreach services to certain communities, such as documentation assistance to Hispanic voters, is not a voter itself and thus “not the object or target of H.B. 156.”
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As for suing in a representational capacity, Skavdahl said the cohort comprises member organizations, with degrees of separation far removed from individual members, and did not point to a person specifically aggrieved among the network’s member base.
In a prior interview with the Washington Examiner, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, whom the Equality State Policy Center had sued as Wyoming’s chief elections officer, said H.B. 156 is “commonsense” legislation in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda on election integrity reform.
“Marc Elias was no match for this vigorous defense,” Gray, a Republican, told the Washington Examiner at the time of the lawsuit’s dismissal. “We put together a great team.”
Gray thanked the Trump administration and the Republican National Committee for supporting the state in the thrown-out suit. During litigation, the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a statement of interest siding with Wyoming, and the RNC moved to intervene and accordingly join Gray as a defendant.
Dhillon Law Group, the law firm of Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, served as Gray’s outside counsel.
H.B. 156, a state version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act proposed in Congress, requires prospective voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship or Wyoming residency, such as a driver’s license, a U.S. passport, a birth certificate, or naturalization paperwork.
In the initial lawsuit, Elias suggested that H.B. 156 was “far more likely” to disenfranchise U.S. citizens, who may be unable to provide the necessary documentation, than prevent noncitizens from unlawfully voting.
The complaint, which invoked the history of women’s suffrage in Wyoming, the first U.S. state to grant women the right to vote, claimed that female voters — married women in particular — would face administrative barriers at the registration booths because of marital name changes.
Among others purportedly without access to acceptable forms of identification, the Elias Law Group asserted that those “disproportionately” affected by the Wyoming bill include the state’s homeless population, low-income individuals whose licenses were suspended due to unpaid fines, youth aging out of the juvenile justice system and child welfare programs, strictly Spanish-speaking Hispanic citizens, and transgender voters who legally changed their identities.
Gray said the statute is not discriminatory and is applied equally to everyone.
“The Left trots out these slogans that are false, and we debunked them in our response,” Gray told the Washington Examiner, adding, “These sorts of worn-out narratives that are false that the Left brings up, we countered those in our response, and we won.”
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The state’s granted motion to dismiss said the plaintiff heavily relied on “a slew of hypothetical scenarios premised on speculative arguments.” Plaintiffs did not identify a single, and otherwise qualified, Wyoming resident who would be barred from registering to vote under H.B. 156’s regulations, the defense said.
Skavdahl agreed that the claims of discrimination were “broad, conclusory allegations lacking factual substance.”
Kansans for Constitutional Freedom v. Kobach
In May, Elias tried to block a law banning foreign actors from funneling money into state-level ballot initiatives in Kansas.
Representing the foreign-funded Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, a coalition of pro-abortion activists, the Elias Law Group argued that the ban in question infringed on the free speech rights of those who accept foreign-traced funds and then lobby in favor of or against a specific policy position.
The suit said that such so-called “restrictions on issue-advocacy speech” will “impede public debate in Kansas about some of the most important policy issues of our times.”
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On June 30, another Obama-appointed judge squashed the plaintiff’s bid to block the campaign finance bill, H.B. 2106, which prohibits donations from foreign nationals pledged in support or against proposed amendments to the Kansas constitution.
“Kansas has identified a compelling interest in preventing foreign influence in Kansans’ decisions about its foundational governing document,” Judge Daniel D. Crabtree, an Obama appointee, ruled.
Federal law already forbids foreign interests from contributing to individual candidates and super PACs, but a backdoor exists concerning ballot measures. H.B. 2106, however, closed this foreign interference loophole in Kansas elections.
Crabtree upheld the state’s authority to prohibit foreign actors from meddling in Kansas politics.
In the court order, Crabtree pointed to proponent testimony identifying Kansans for Constitutional Freedom as the beneficiary of nearly $1.6 million in foreign-tied funds for fiscal 2022. According to court statements that Crabtree cited, KCF then used those funds to successfully campaign against a post-Roe referendum that would have repealed the constitutional right to an abortion in Kansas.
“After all, even KCF’s exhibits suggest that it received a not insignificant amount of foreign-backed funds to oppose Kansas’s 2022 abortion amendment,” Crabtree countered.
The money reportedly came from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a left-wing lobbying group and pass-through funding vehicle in Washington bankrolled by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, whom Elias has personally represented in the past. According to 2022 tax filings, the Wyss Foundation paid the Elias Law Group over $61,000 for “consulting services” that year.
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Dark money watchdogs say the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which was KCF’s largest single donor in 2022, spent more than $130 million influencing the outcome of ballot campaigns across the country.
Crabtree noted that KCF intends to solicit future financing to support or oppose other amendments to the Kansas Constitution. KCF, as Crabtree mentioned, plans to mount an effort to oppose a proposition that would change the way Kansas selects its Supreme Court justices.
“KCF still can speak about constitutional amendment issues,” Crabtree wrote. “It just can’t use foreign money to do so.”
Crabtree sided with the state on the eve of the Kansas law’s effective date.
Crabtree’s decision in support of the foreign funding ban underscored a broader trend in 2025 of states enacting laws aimed at restricting foreign funding in America’s elections process, with courts consistently upholding those bans.
Notable wins for the Elias Law Group
The Elias Law Group also pointed the Washington Examiner to a handful of legal fights that the law firm won this year.
In Alabama, a three-judge federal panel ruled unanimously that the state must use congressional maps drawn by a court-appointed special master for the rest of the decade, until regular redistricting can occur in 2023. The maps created a second black-majority district more favorable to Democrats.
In Arizona, a federal appeals court struck down provisions in two of the state’s voting laws requiring “heightened” proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
In New York, a judge halted the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, such as adding a proof-of-citizenship section to the national voter registration form, but other parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order were allowed to proceed, including a directive to tighten vote-by-mail ballot deadlines.
In Pennsylvania, a federal appeals court ruled that mail-in ballots submitted without proper dates on the return envelope may not be discarded. That practice likely boosts Democrats in the state’s elections, as Democratic voters are far likelier than Republicans to vote by mail.