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1 week ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Manny Marotta |Erin Smith |Marcus Gadson
Two conservative justices on the Montana Supreme Court recently suggested that partisan bias drives some of the court’s decisions.
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1 month 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2 months 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.
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2 months ago | 
statecourtreport.org | Justin Lam |Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith |Eric Petry
In a dispute that has stretched five months past Election Day, a state appeals court ruled last week that over 60,000 North Carolinians who voted in the 2024 state supreme court election will have to prove their eligibility or risk having their ballots thrown out. The court also held that the votes of hundreds of children and dependents born abroad to North Carolinians will not count. The ruling in Griffin v.
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Mar 27, 2025 | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith |Eric Petry |Andrew Garber
On April 1, Wisconsinites will cast their ballots in a state supreme court election that is already the most expensive judicial election in history. The Brennan Center has documented an estimated $66.9 million in spending to date on the race for an open seat on the court, much of it from national figures and groups — all evidence that judicial elections have entered a new era of politicization.
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Mar 26, 2025 | 
statecourtreport.org | Bridget Lavender |Erin Smith |Sarah Kessler
The Tennessee Supreme Court will hear arguments over the claims of a former insurance company employee who objected to the company’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement and was fired after she emailed legislators to express her concerns. Opinions, Briefs and other Documents
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Mar 6, 2025 | 
statecourtreport.org | Alicia Bannon |Erin Smith |Aaron Saiger |Arif Panju
As the Trump administration tries to assert unprecedented influence over education, the ruling reminds us that most educational policy is set at the state and local levels. Last week, a Wyoming trial court ruled in a 186-page opinion that the state was underfunding its public schools in violation of the state constitution and ordered the state legislature to modify the school funding system.
