DNC’s ‘Rigged’ Primary Election Won’t Get Supreme Court Look

The Democratic National Committee and former chairwoman Deborah Wasserman Schultz won’t have to defend against claims they rigged the 2016 presidential primaries for Hillary Clinton, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive the case.

The justices declined to take up the issue on Monday.

Donors to the DNC and Clinton’s primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), alleged the organization and its leadership actively worked to undermine Sanders’ campaign and bolster Clinton’s, despite promises to run fair and unbiased contests.

The Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said the plaintiffs hadn’t said enough in their complaint about how they relied on the DNC’s promises to meet the heightened pleading standard required for fraud-type claims.

Evidence that the DNC was in cahoots with the Clinton campaign emerged after emails stolen by Russian government hackers were published online. The DNC later apologized to the Sanders’ campaign, and Wasserman Schultz and others resigned.

Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state and senator from New York, won the Democratic nomination, but lost the presidency to Donald Trump.

A D.C.-based federal court dismissed a similar suit in 2018.

Rigging primary elections undermines public confidence in our democracy, the donors told the justices. The “restoration of faith in American democracy requires this Court to act.”

Neither the DNC nor Wasserman Schultz responded to the donor’s petition. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declined to review the case.

The case is Wilding v. DNC Servs. Corp., U.S., No. 19-1185, review denied 6/1/20.