Michigan Court of Appeals to Decide Civil Case Filed against 2020 Trump Electors

In 2023, three Biden electors from Michigan filed a civil lawsuit against the sixteen alternate-slate Trump electors from the 2020 general election.  The American Freedom Law Center is representing five of the sixteen Trump electors in this lawsuit.

On October 22, 2025, the presiding circuit court judge in Kent County, Michigan denied our motions for summary disposition, allowing all of the claims filed against the Trump electors to proceed.

The four claims advanced by the Biden electors are (1) a request for a declaratory judgment that they and “not [the Trump electors], were true Electors of the State of Michigan for President and Vice President of the United States, and that [the Trump electors’] fake elector scheme was illegal under Michigan law”; (2) invasion of privacy – false light; (3) statutory conversion; and (4) civil conspiracy.

The Michigan Attorney General filed criminal charges against these same Trump electors, similarly alleging that the so-called “fake elector scheme” violated Michigan law.  The judge hearing those claims dismissed the criminal charges, finding that they lacked merit.  Yet, this separate civil case proceeds.

We immediately filed an application for leave to appeal the circuit court’s order in the Michigan Court of Appeals, and on February 18, 2026, the court granted our application and two others, consolidating the cases on appeal.

On Friday, March 6, 2026, we filed our appellants’ brief, demonstrating that all of the Biden elector’s claims fail as a matter of law and that the circuit court’s order denying our motion to dismiss is patently wrong.

As we argue in our brief:

Make no mistake, process is punishment.  If this patently frivolous action is not summarily dismissed for the reasons set forth herein, [the Trump electors] will continue to suffer financial hardship and emotional stress associated with this litigation.  All of this has a chilling effect on the fundamental right to participate in our political process protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Unlike [the Biden elector’s] Complaint, the point of this appeal is not to relitigate the 2020 election—that shot is down range.  Rather, the goal of this appeal is to put a stop to the weaponization of the legal process to attack political opponents.  Our republican form of government will not long sustain such an abusive use of the courts.  And such an abuse has a chilling effect on a private citizen’s First Amendment right to be involved in the political process.

We are asking the Michigan Court of Appeals to summarily reverse the circuit court and dismiss the lawsuit as it is an abuse of the legal process.

Attachments