The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a challenge to a Nevada law to protect election workers, likely ending the effort to decriminalize their harassment. 

In a unanimous opinion released Monday, the three-member panel of judges unanimously dismissed the suit brought by four former poll and ballot counting observers, who were represented in the case by Sigal Chattah, the new interim U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada, the state’s highest federal law enforcement officer. 

The ruling comes one year after federal Judge Cristina Silva blocked the lawsuit over a lack of standing. Chattah appealed the decision one month later.

The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office, which was the defendant in the case, commended the dismissal.

“No one should be harassed or intimidated for supporting our democratic process, and this bipartisan law shows the importance of putting people over politics,” the office said in a Monday statement.

In a text message, Chattah declined to comment on the case, given that she is now with the Department of Justice. As of Monday, there were no filings in the court docket indicating that she had removed herself as counsel.

The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by Republican megadonor Robert Beadles, who has funded legal challenges against Nevada election law and threatened officials in Washoe County, and three other plaintiffs.

They alleged that Nevada’s Election Worker Protection Act — passed unanimously by the Legislature in 2023 to make harassment of election workers a felony — violated their constitutional rights.

The Election Worker Protection Act (SB406) makes the harassment, intimidation or use of force against election workers performing their duties or in retaliation against them punishable by a fine and as many as four years in prison. The law was intended to help address a severe election worker shortage after many retired or resigned in the aftermath of the harassment they faced during and after the 2020 election.

The lawsuit argued that the statute was not specific enough in defining who is an election worker and what constitutes intimidation, saying the law would interfere with the rights of poll watchers. 

The Ninth Circuit upheld the district court’s dismissal over a lack of standing. Standing requires the plaintiffs to have an injury — in this case, that they ostensibly will not be able to conduct their election observation activities. But the judges wrote that the plaintiffs did not credibly demonstrate an injury, and that the fear of prosecution they cited — a 2020 tweet from Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford saying he would prosecute voter intimidation — was irrelevant because the law had not yet been enacted.

“Plaintiffs’ vague allegations amount to ‘some day intentions’ to do something to an elections official that might be misinterpreted as intimidating,” the Ninth Circuit panel wrote. “This is not a specific, concrete plan to engage in conduct arguably proscribed by SB 406.”

Chattah, a firebrand conservative who is also the state’s Republican National Committeewoman, argued the case before the appeals court in early March, a few weeks before President Donald Trump named her as the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada.

Chattah has also not publicly resigned her position as the Republican National Committeewoman, which might violate federal rules prohibiting Department of Justice employees from participating in political activities. At a Saturday meeting of the Nevada Republican Party, Chattah remained listed as committeewoman on the agenda.

Now that the 9th Circuit Court has dismissed the case, Beadles and the other plaintiffs’ only recourse would be to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.