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Supreme Court of Georgia
Case No. S21M0561
December 12, 2020
The Honorable Supreme Court met pursuant to adjournment.
The following order was passed:
Donald J. Trump et al. v. Brad Raffensperger et al.
Petitioners filed this “Emergency Petition for Writ of Certiorari” to challenge the superior court’s December 9, 2020 “Order on Case Status,” which order provided that, because in the underlying election contest petitioners had withdrawn their request for emergency injunctive relief, the case would proceed “in the normal course.” As the basis for their petition, they reference Supreme Court Rules 39 and 40, but those rules provide for petitions for writ of certiorari to this Court from opinions or orders issued by the Court of Appeals filed under Supreme Court Rule 38, and thus do not apply here. For the reasons that follow, we dismiss the petition for lack of jurisdiction.
To the extent that the petition can be construed as a direct appeal from the December 9 order, we note as an initial matter that this Court has subject matter jurisdiction over “election contest[s],” Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. VI, Sec. VI, Par. II (2), and the underlying case fits within that definition, as it is challenging the result of an election. See Cook v. Bd. of Registrars of Randolph County, 291 Ga. 67, 70 (727 SE2d 478) (2012). However, the December 9 order is not a final judgment, see OCGA § 5-6-34 (a) (1) (direct appeals may be taken from “[a]ll final judgments, that is to say, where the case is no longer pending in the court below”), and therefore petitioners were required to follow interlocutory appeal procedures in order to obtain review of the order. See OCGA § 5-6-34 (b); Duke v. State, 306 Ga. 171, 171 (829 SE2d 348) (2019). Although there are some exceptions to that general rule, this case does not fit within any
