Erin Smith

1 week ago | statecourtreport.org | Aaron Saiger |Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court divided 4–4 over whether denying a charter school application from a religious school would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on establishing or favoring a religion. The decision upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s holding that chartering a school that would “evangelize” a particular faith violated state legislation and the Oklahoma and federal constitutions.

1 month ago | statecourtreport.org | Sarah Kessler |Erin Smith

Iowa Supreme Court held that the plaintiff organization did not have standing to seek to dissolve an injunction entered in a separate case that barred the secretary of state from providing voter registration forms in languages other than English, by claiming such materials fall within an exception to the state law underlying the injunction.

1 month ago | statecourtreport.org | Justin Lam |Erin Smith |Alicia Bannon

The court approved a law to strip the governor’s election board powers, risking creating a precedent for partisan power-grabbing. Last week, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the legislature’s power grab over the State Boards of Elections, the agency charged with administering elections, campaign finance disclosures, and all 100 county election boards.

1 month ago | statecourtreport.org | Erin Smith |Justin Lam |Alicia Bannon

Judge Jefferson Griffin (R), who had attempted to have more than 60,000 votes thrown out in his race for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, has conceded to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D). His action ends a dispute that extended six months after the 2024 election and played out in both state and federal courts. Griffin’s concession came just two days after a federal district court judge ordered the election be certified.

1 month ago | statecourtreport.org | Joseph Richie |Sarah Kessler |Erin Smith

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will address the scope of Gov. Tony Evers’s state constitutional authority to approve spending bills passed by the legislature only “in part,” by line-item vetoing other parts. Presented with a 2023 budget bill that approved a two-year increase in school funding limits through the 2024–25 school year, Evers struck the “20” and the dash from references to “2024–25” so that they read “2425.” As altered, the bill increased school funding for 402 years, not 2.