Gorsuch rejects Minnesota Republican’s request to delay House race

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday rejected a request from a Republican congressional candidate in Minnesota to delay his House race until February.

Tyler Kistner, the GOP candidate running in Minnesota’s 2nd District, was asking the high court to intervene in the race after it was thrown into flux following the death of a third-party candidate.

Under state law, the race would move to February following the death of Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks, but a federal judge this month granted incumbent Rep. Angie Craig (D) an injunction against enforcing the postponement.

Kistner appealed the district court’s ruling, but Gorsuch shot down the request without comment or sending it to the full Supreme Court, setting up the race to take place as originally scheduled on Nov. 3.

Kistner’s lawyers had argued in a Monday filing that the Supreme Court should stay the lower court injunction on the grounds that holding the election in November “wreaks enormous and irreparable injury on voters, the state, and Mr. Kistner.”

“Voters were told for weeks that votes would not be counted, and it is undisputed that voters relied on that representation by not casting votes in the Second Congressional District contest. By changing the rules in the middle of the election, and thereby subjecting voters to different rules on the basis of when they cast their ballots, the injunction violates basic equal-protection principles and severely injures the affected voters and public interest,” they wrote.

U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright, an Obama appointee, had initially ruled that the delay would “unconstitutionally burden the rights of voters who have, or otherwise would, cast their ballots in the general election” and that “Representative Craig will suffer irreparable harm absent this Court issuing a preliminary injunction.”

The Supreme Court ruling officially schedules the St. Paul-area district for Nov. 3 between Kistner and Craig. Craig won the district in 2018 by about 5 points, but President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the suburban district by just 1 percentage point in 2016.