Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

On 13 July 2026 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declined to hear the State Ballot Law Commission's appeal over Republican attorney-general candidate Michael Walsh's ballot access, an order that did not reach the merits of the underlying dispute . That Left the Essex County Superior Court's 10 July reinstatement of Walsh to the primary ballot standing .

The SJC is Massachusetts' highest appellate court, tracing its history to a 1692 Charter and now the oldest continuously operating appellate court in the Western Hemisphere. It hears civil and criminal appeals; original trial jurisdiction it once held over tort and capital cases was removed by the legislature in 1880 and 1891 respectively, and the Appeals Court was created in 1972 to share its caseload.

The dispute began when the Ballot Law Commission sustained a Democratic Party objection in June, finding Walsh's nomination papers fell short of the 10,000 certified signatures required. The Superior Court reversed that finding on 10 July even as it cited "substantial evidence" of fraud in the signature-gathering process, a finding about the process rather than a finding that Walsh's own submitted signatures were themselves the fraudulent ones. Walsh remains on the ballot; a related case involving lieutenant-governor candidate Manning Martin, on the same signature-fraud theory, remains pending.