An attorney for veteran southern Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Bost told the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that Illinois’ post-election mail-in ballot-counting law created the potential for reputational and financial harm to the congressman and he should be allowed to sue to try to overturn it.

But a lawyer for the state of Illinois argued that lower federal courts correctly found Bost lacked standing to challenge the law and that with the dominant electoral successes of the six-term congressman from Murphysboro, he had failed to show how it had caused him harm at a level to meet rules required to contest laws in federal court.

Beneath the nearly two hours of oral arguments in the case was the fate of Illinois’ 2015 election law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted for up to

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