Rep. Darrell Issa wants to slam the brakes on his federal case objecting to mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
In mid-March, he sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber to halt the practice because, he said, it provides “an unfair electoral advantage for opponents of Republican congressional incumbents.”
But Monday, attorneys for the East County congressman and Weber asked U.S. District Judge Andrew Schopler in downtown San Diego to stay — or freeze — all proceedings.
That’s because a week earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a very similar case involving Issa’s GOP colleague Rep. Mike Bost of southern Illinois.
Bost, with several other plaintiffs, sued Weber’s Illinois counterpart — Bernadette Matthews, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Elections.
But that Illinois case, filed in May 2022, has already made it through the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, based in Chicago.
A divided panel upheld the district court’s dismissal of the case for lack of standing — or eligibility to sue.
That’s an issue in Issa’s case as well.
Now the Supreme Court, in a 111-word unsigned order, has OK’d Bost’s petition for review — which is rarely granted.
“His case … will likely be argued in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime next year,” said SCOTUSblog.
Issa’s lawyers with conservative group Judicial Watch — as well as state attorneys — want to see how the Bost case plays out.
“Given the similarity of the issues in this case and in Bost, the outcome of the jurisdictional issues in Bost may inform the jurisdictional issues presented in this case,” wrote Issa lawyer Russ Nobile along with state Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Rosenberg and others.
“No one could have been certain of the grant of certiorari, and the herein relief was requested at the first opportunity,” they added.
Both sides say the Supreme Court’s decision on the jurisdictional questions posed in Bost “will serve the interests of judicial efficiency and is appropriate ‘to secure the just, speedy and inexpensive determination’ of this action.”
The high court won’t decide whether counting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but accepted up to two weeks later — as in the Illinois case — is legal.
Instead, says the court order, “The sole question presented here is whether Petitioners, as federal candidates, have pleaded sufficient factual allegations to show Article III standing to challenge state time, place and manner regulations concerning their federal elections.”
In other words, can members of Congress show they’ve been hurt by a state’s ballot-counting rules?
Curtis Morrison, among the Democrats seeking to oust Issa in the 48th Congressional District in 2026, gained intervenor/defendant status in the mail-ballot case.
Theory on Issa’s motion
Late Monday night, he offered a theory on why Issa seeks to freeze the case pending a SCOTUS verdict.
Morrison said Issa may be thinking “this lawsuit isn’t a great idea for me, electorally, because it gives a platform for one of my opponents to talk about me. And also it doesn’t make me look good. I mean, like seniors and vets are overwhelmingly pro absentee ballots.”
And Issa’s district has many older voters and veterans, he noted.
“I think he thought he had a lot of political capital because of the way the last few races played out and maybe he’s rethinking that,” Morrison said.
Issa and his lawyers wouldn’t comment on Morrison’s conjecture.
But early Tuesday, attorney Nobile told Times of San Diego in an email statement: “The only federal court that’s ever ruled on the merits of similar claims unanimously agreed with Congressman Issa — federal law requires ballot receipt by Election Day.”
That’s an apparent reference to a 5th Circuit appeals court ruling by a three-judge panel on a Mississippi case made last October.
Nobile, based in Mississippi, added:
“I proposed a stay here after the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would review a federal court’s decision to avoid addressing the merits of similar claims Judicial Watch is handling in Illinois.
“Secretary Weber stated she intends to raise the same arguments before the Supreme Court in this case as well. Rather than spending months (or possibly years) relitigating the same jurisdictional question in California’s lower federal courts, it’s more efficient to let the Supreme Court resolve Weber’s inexplicable belief that federal courts lack jurisdiction over federal claims brought by federal candidates regarding their federal elections.”
All parties in the Issa case have agreed to pause the briefing schedule — the set of deadlines for filing motions and other arguments. (The first deadline would have been Wednesday.)
League of Women Voters objects
Consenting to Issa’s stay motion are Secretary of State Weber and fellow defendants Morrison, the Vet Voice Foundation and the California Alliance for Retired Americans.
But the state’s League of Women Voters — also granted intervenor/defendant status — is against any effort to pause the case. The group wants a chance to have the case thrown out.
That group “indicated that they intend to argue that the Court has subject matter jurisdiction for purposes of granting a Rule 12 motion to dismiss, and stated that they would oppose [Issa’s] motion for a stay of all proceedings,” says the joint motion.
With the motion being contested, Judge Schopler will have to decide. It’s unclear when that order will come down.
Congressman Bost, whose Illinois case will go before the high court, assumed office in January 2015.
Besides challenging late-arriving mail ballots, Bost is like Issa in another way. He shuns in-person town halls.
“At a March 2017 meeting with editors of the Southern Illinoisan, Bost said that he did not do ‘town halls’ because they had become too combative,” says a Wikipedia entry.
“You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That’s not what we need,” Bost said, referring to humiliation sessions during China’s Cultural Revolution. “We need to have meetings with people that are productive.”
Bost later apologized, saying he had “used a poor choice of words.”
Updated at 1:45 a.m. June 11, 2025.
