State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in April

Each month, State Court Report previews upcoming oral arguments in prominent or interesting state court cases.

In April, state supreme courts will take up a wide range of issues, including a conservative group’s voter eligibility investigation in Wisconsin, the legality of a New York program temporarily placing children in “host homes,” a million-dollar defamation judgment for an Idaho drag performer, and more.

Can Maine Use Ranked-Choice Voting in State-Level General Elections? — April 1

In the Matter of Request for Opinion of the Justices, Maine Supreme Court

The Maine Supreme Court will consider the legislature’s request for an advisory opinion on whether the state constitution permits lawmakers to extend the state’s ranked-choice voting system, currently used in primaries, to the general elections for governor and the state legislature.

Enacted in a 2016 citizen initiative, Maine uses ranked-choice voting to decide general elections for federal offices, but not state-level — a 2017 state high court advisory opinion found doing so would be unconstitutional. Given the risk of confusion caused by having two general election systems and following an Alaska Supreme Court ruling upholding that state’s use of ranked-choice voting under similar state constitutional provisions, Maine lawmakers last year tried to extend ranked-choice voting. Despite passing both houses, the bill was held over to the current legislative session after the governor raised questions about its legality.

At issue in both the 2017 advisory opinion and the legislature’s current request to the Maine high court are state constitutional clauses defining the winner for governor, state senator, and state representative as the candidate who receives a “plurality” of all votes returned.

The 2017 opinion concluded that because votes are tabulated in multiple rounds under ranked-choice voting if there are three or more candidates and none receives a majority in the first round, and a candidate who gets a plurality of votes in that first round may not ultimately prevail in subsequent rounds, the system violates those clauses.

In support of the current bill, lawmakers argue that advisory opinions are not binding on future justices, and that the 2017 ruling was issued 18 months before ranked-choice voting was implemented and without the experience of how it has worked in practice for almost a decade. Substantively, they add, the opinion overlooked that voters’ rankings are not “a series of separate votes cast in separate elections” but rather an instruction on how to tabulate a single election, in which the winner at the end of counting need only have a received a plurality of votes. The Republican National Committee and Maine’s attorney general have submitted briefs disagreeing.

Watch the arguments here.

Are Lengthy Prison Terms Constitutionally Equivalent to Life Sentences for Michigan Youth? — April 8

People v. Eads, Michigan Supreme Court

The Michigan Supreme Court will weigh whether its 2022 decision in People v. Stovall — which held that parolable life sentences for juvenile defendants convicted of non-premediated murder violate the state’s “cruel or unusual” punishment clause — should be extended to prison terms that are so lengthy they are de facto life sentences.

James Eads challenges his sentence of 50-to-75 years for a killing that occurred when he was 16. The intermediate court originally refused to take up his appeal for sentencing relief, but the Michigan high court subsequently remanded the case and directed the court to consider Stovall, as well as another precedent requiring a juvenile defendant’s youth to be assessed as a mitigating factor before a term-of-years prison sentence may be imposed. On remand, the intermediate court panel found Ead’s sentence constitutionally equivalent to the life sentence invalidated in Stovall. Subsequent panels have since relied on Eads to reach the same conclusion with respect to a 40-to-60-year sentence for second-degree murder and a 67-year sentence for non-homicide crimes.

Eads’s challenge — which has attracted significant amicus support, including from the Juvenile Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, and a group of incarcerated people serving life or lengthy sentences — comes as the Michigan Supreme Court has recently stood out for expanding protections against excessive sentencing beyond those recognized under federal law.

Watch the arguments here.

Should an Idaho Blogger Have to Pay a $1 Million-Plus Defamation Judgment? — April 9

Posey v. Bushnell, Idaho Supreme Court

The Idaho Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a more than $1 million damages award in a defamation lawsuit brought by a drag performer against a blogger who falsely claimed the performer exposed himself while dancing onstage at a Pride event that included children. The case has been widely covered by the press.

On appeal, the blogger argues the lower court erred in finding the performer was a private individual subject to greater defamation protection, rather than “a limited purpose public figure,” given his choice to inject himself in a “pre-existing public controversy” about “drag performances, minors, and public morality.” The blogger also argues the trial court erred in multiple other ways, including regarding the evidence allowed for determining damages and decisions relating to jury instructions.

Watch the arguments here.

Do Changes to the Citizen Initiative Process Infringe Montanans’ Rights? — April 10

Ellingson v. State, Montana Supreme Court

The Montana Supreme Court will consider if parts of a 2023 law that changed rules and requirements for citizen-proposed ballot measures infringed on state citizens’ powers of initiative and referendum.

The state appeals a trial court decision finding unconstitutional a $3,700 filing fee for proposals; a four-year ban on filing a ballot initiative substantially similar to a previously defeated measure; and a requirement that a legislative committee vote on the proposed initiative’s merits, with the results then placed on the ballot petition. The high court is asked to decide the standard Montana courts should apply to challenges under the initiative power. The state argues that a ballot regulation is constitutional if it is “reasonably tailored” to facilitate and does not unduly burden “the People’s lawmaking power.” The ballot measure requirements need not be on “equal footing” with the process lawmakers require for their own bills in order to be constitutional, the state says.

The Montana Supreme Court recently allowed a citizen-proposed amendment that would create additional protections for the initiative and referendum power to advance toward inclusion on the 2026 ballot. The proposal is partially in response to the 2023 law.

Watch the arguments here.

Is a “Host Home” Program for New York Children Constitutional? — April 14

Lawyers for Children v. New York State Office of Children, New York Court of Appeals

New York’s highest court will take up claims by Legal Aid and other advocates for children that the state’s child services agency acted without legislative authorization when it created a new “shadow foster-care” system for children whose parents voluntarily seek temporary outside care because of a family crisis or illness.

That system, which places children with approved host families, lacks numerous safeguards that state statutes establishing voluntary foster care require, the advocates contend. Those include preventative services to keep children with their birth families as much as possible, judicial oversight of the placement, right to counsel for both parent and child, and prioritization of placement with kin and siblings, among others. Amicus groups — including Columbia Law’s Family Defense Clinic and the National Center for Youth Law — argue that the “host home” program and these statutory conflicts create “a new pathway for child protective services agencies to separate parents and children without due process.”

The state responds that parents availing themselves of the program choose the host family, retain legal custody of their children, and may terminate the arrangement at any time, making the statutory framework — which entails a transfer of custody and care — inapplicable. Because the “host home” regulations implement legislative policies of “promoting child welfare while respecting parents’ right to place out their children and preventing unnecessary foster care placements,” the state argues, they also do not violate separation-of-powers principles. A divided intermediate court agreed.

Watch the arguments here.

Are Notices of a Wisconsin Voter’s Ineligibility for Incompetence Private? — April 21

Wisconsin Voter Alliance v. Secord, Wisconsin Supreme Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will consider whether notices to the state elections commission of a court’s determination that a person is “incompetent” to vote — meaning they cannot understand the objectives of the electoral process due to impairment or disability — are subject to disclosure under the state’s public records law.

A conservative group filed lawsuits seeking these “Notices of Voter Eligibility” from 14 counties after it said it learned of “unexplained discrepancies” — specifically, it said, state elections officials were not entering people found incompetent as “ineligible” in the state’s voter registration database and were sending some absentee ballots. A panel of intermediate court judges initially found the group entitled to the notices. The state supreme court reversed without addressing the merits, however, finding the panel bound, as part of a unitary appellate court, by an earlier panel’s holding that the notices for another county were subject to statutory privacy protections. A state statute generally protects from disclosure “all court records pertinent to the finding of incompetency.” On remand, the panel followed that prior holding but noted it “vehemently” disagreed.

On appeal, Wisconsin Voters Alliance argues that the notices are not a court’s underlying determination of incompetency, but rather a statutorily mandated consequence of that proceeding. The public interest served by disclosure — securing the fundamental right to vote against potential effects ineligible voters may have on an election — also outweighs privacy concerns, the group contends. A consortium of media organizations and government-transparency groups have filed an amicus brief urging the Wisconsin high court to use this case to clarify what requesters must prove to compel disclosure of public records.

Listen to the arguments here.

Sarah Kessler is an advisor and contributing editor to State Court Report.

Erin Geiger Smith is a writer and editor at the Brennan

Suggested Citation: Sarah Kessler & Erin Geiger Smith, State Court Oral Arguments to Watch for in April, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Mar. 30, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/state-court-oral-arguments-watch-april-0