The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal seeking to overturn substantial legal sanctions against attorneys who represented failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and then-Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem. The attorneys had made unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in their efforts to challenge how Arizona conducts its elections.
The high court released a list of cases it would consider and those it refused, with the petition from Lake's former legal team among those rejected. No explanation was provided for the Supreme Court's decision not to review the case.
The sanctions stem from a 2022 lawsuit filed by Lake and Finchem against the Maricopa and Pima county boards of supervisors. The legal action aimed to prevent the counties from using electronic tabulators to count votes during that year’s midterm elections. The legal team, which included Minnesota attorney Andrew Parker, Washington, D.C., employment attorney Kurt Olsen, and celebrity attorney Alan Dershowitz, argued that Arizona's voting machines were vulnerable to hacking. They sought federal court intervention to block election workers from using these machines to determine the outcome of the 2022 elections, despite Arizona law requiring their use.
A trial court judge ultimately dismissed the case, characterizing the allegations as merely conjectural and "frivolous." The judge, John Tuchi, subsequently imposed $122,000 in sanctions on the attorneys. Judge Tuchi clarified that the decision to penalize the lawyers was not intended to excuse Finchem and Lake, but rather to discourage other attorneys from pursuing similarly baseless arguments in the future. He wrote that his decision aimed to deter such filings by anyone, whether an attorney or not.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling approximately a year later. However, Alan Dershowitz’s involvement in the sanctions was dismissed by the appellate court due to his limited participation in the case. The petition to the U.S. Supreme Court represented the final attempt for Andrew Parker to avoid paying the sanctions, as Kurt Olsen was not involved in this latest appeal.
Attorney Nathan Lewin, representing Parker in his Supreme Court appeal, had urged the justices to take up the case. Lewin warned that such sanctions could negatively affect the justice system by chilling the willingness of lawyers to explore legal theories. He argued that these penalties would deter attorneys from bringing creative, aggressive, or novel claims of the sort often necessary to shape the legal landscape.
Conversely, attorneys representing the Maricopa County supervisors, who had filed a response to the appeal, informed the justices that the sanctions were a direct consequence of filing a lawsuit without factual backing or supporting evidence. Their response indicated that the petitioners were sanctioned because their filings relied on speculations and presumptions, not because they filed a difficult case to win.
Separately, in 2024, Kurt Olsen and Andrew Parker faced ethical complaints related to the tabulator lawsuit. A disciplinary panel eventually dismissed those complaints.