Supreme Court rebuffs RFK Jr. bid to get on New York presidential ballot

The Supreme Court has turned down a bid by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be placed on the presidential ballot in New York.

The high court released its decision in a one-line order Friday afternoon. As is often the case with rulings on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, there was no explanation of the court’s rationale and no justice recorded any dissent.

Kennedy’s campaign pressed forward with a court battle to appear on the New York ballot despite his announcement last month that he was suspending his long-shot presidential bid and endorsing former President Donald Trump.

Kennedy’s campaign gathered more than 100,000 signatures to win him a place on the ballot in the Empire State, but Democrats brought a court challenge arguing that Kennedy did not actually live at the address in Katonah, New York, that he submitted to elections officials.

Kennedy said he began renting a room in the home of a childhood friend in Katonah last year, but the friend's wife testified that he had only stayed there overnight once.

“I am, at the very fiber of my being, a New Yorker,” Kennedy declared in a court filing last month.

New York courts ordered Kennedy removed from the ballot, and his efforts to overturn those rulings struck out with a federal district judge and at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals before coming up short Friday at the nation’s highest court.

Reached by phone shortly after the ruling, Kennedy said: “I don't think I have a comment on it. We’re looking at our options.”

Kennedy’s effort to remain on the ballot in New York struck many observers as bizarre because, in the wake of his endorsement of Trump, Kennedy sought to pull his name off ballots in battleground states where his presence might impact the showdown between Trump and the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. In recent weeks, Kennedy's name has been removed from ballots in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina .

An attorney for Kennedy’s moribund campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Court’s action, but in court filings Kennedy’s legal team lamented New York’s notoriously onerous ballot requirements for third-party candidates and said Kennedy’s absence from this year’s presidential ballot violated the rights of voters who signed his petitions.

“Those voters have a constitutional right to have Kennedy placed on the ballot — and to vote for him, whether he is campaigning for their vote or not,” the Kennedy campaign’s lawyers wrote in the emergency application they filed with the court last week.

Kennedy, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy Jr. and a son of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, entered the presidential race last year as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, but announced last October that he was parting with the Democrats and would mount an independent campaign for the White House.