Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias stumbled hard in 2025 with a series of courtroom defeats that sting for the progressive agenda.
Marc Elias, the left’s go-to legal strategist, saw his firm, the Elias Law Group, take multiple losses in high-stakes cases on redistricting, voter registration rules, and foreign funding in elections, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
Elias first targeted Wisconsin’s congressional maps, filing dual lawsuits to redraw district lines before the 2026 midterms, claiming an unfair Republican advantage. The liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court, with a 4-3 split, still refused to hear both cases on June 25, leaving the current maps intact.
Democrats had banked on the court’s progressive tilt to flip House seats with new boundaries. Yet, unanimous rejection without explanation shows even friendly benches aren’t buying Elias’s gerrymandering arguments this time.
One case, Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission II, was refiled and now sits with a three-judge panel, including two who backed a liberal judicial candidate earlier this year. Elias Law Group’s Abha Khanna called this a “positive development,” but the March 1 deadline for map finalization looms tight.
Khanna told reporters, “There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections.” Her optimism feels hollow when Judge Julie Genovese, at a December 12 conference, shrugged off rushed timelines with, “We’ll decide them when we can decide them.”
In Wyoming, Elias challenged H.B. 156, a law demanding proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration, arguing it could block legitimate citizens. Obama-appointed Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed the suit on July 22, ruling the plaintiff, Equality State Policy Center, lacked standing since no specific harm was proven.
Skavdahl’s 17-page opinion gutted the case, pointing out the group isn’t a voter and couldn’t name one injured person. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray celebrated, telling the Washington Examiner, “Marc Elias was no match for this vigorous defense.”
Gray’s team, backed by the Trump administration and the RNC, framed H.B. 156 as a simple, fair policy aligning with election integrity goals. His sharp rebuttal, “The Left trots out these slogans that are false, and we debunked them,” exposes the flimsy narratives Elias leaned on here.
Elias also flopped in Kansas, fighting H.B. 2106, a law banning foreign funds in state ballot initiatives, on behalf of Kansans for Constitutional Freedom. Another Obama appointee, Judge Daniel D. Crabtree, upheld the ban on June 30, affirming Kansas’s right to shield its elections from outside influence.
Crabtree highlighted evidence that the plaintiff group took nearly $1.6 million in foreign-linked money in 2022 to sway an abortion referendum. His ruling cuts through Elias’s free speech claims, noting, “KCF still can speak about constitutional amendment issues, it just can’t use foreign money to do so.”
The decision ties into a growing state push to curb foreign meddling, with courts backing these laws in 2025. Elias’s link to Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, whose foundation paid his firm over $61,000 in 2022, only muddies the optics of his stance.
Despite the bruising defeats, Elias Law Group notched a few victories worth noting. In Alabama, a federal panel locked in court-drawn congressional maps with a second Black-majority district, favoring Democrats through the decade.
Arizona saw a federal appeals court strike down strict citizenship proof rules for voting, a win for Elias’s side. In Pennsylvania, a ruling preserved mail-in ballots lacking proper dates, a practice often benefiting Democratic turnout.
New York offered a partial victory, with a judge halting some Trump administration election changes, such as adding citizenship checks on forms. Still, other parts of the executive order, tightening mail ballot deadlines, moved forward, showing Elias’s mixed record even in success.