The plaintiff, a Democratic presidential elector in 2016, voted for Bernie Sanders for president in the electoral college meeting in December. The Secretary of State then removed him as an elector, so his electoral vote was never counted. The U.S. District Court then ruled in favor of the state and dismissed the case, before any proceedings over the constitutionality of the law had occurred. The Eighth Circuit must now decide whether the case was dismissed too soon.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that ballot access cases are not moot just because the election is over, because there isn't time to decide many cases between the filing of the lawsuit and the date of the election. The main question is whether cases over disobedient presidential electors are also exempt from the mootness problem. The state argued that the elector should have filed his lawsuit in August, when the Democratic Party appointed him an elector. The