Bush v. Gore (2000) (full citation Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000)) was a major decision from the Supreme Court of the United States regarding Florida’s recount of ballots cast in the United States presidential election of 2000.
Petitioner, George W. Bush, had won the 25 electoral votes in Florida (and thus the presidential election) by a narrow margin against respondent, Al Gore. Under Florida’s election laws, the narrow margin triggered an automatic recount of the votes. The ensuing machine recount had narrowed the margin further because it excluded a substantial number of votes, many of them infamously considered invalid because the punch-hole ballots had “hanging chads” (i.e., the punched-out piece of paper, called a “chad,” did not fully detach from the ballot). In response, Gore sought a manual recount of the votes by launching a legal challenge to the election results under a Florida statute. At the state level, the Supreme Court of Florida had ruled in favor Gore, holding that a manual recount was required. But confusion followed, as Florida law had not established statewide uniform guidelines for how to manually re-assess ballots. As a result, Bush petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida, which the Court granted.
The Court, in a per curiam opinion, held that the lack of uniform guidelines rendered the manual recount unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Moreover, the Court ruled that the Florida Supreme Court could not fashion new election law, a power reserved for the Florida state legislature, and therefore the previous outcome of the election (with Bush as the winner) must stand. Several justices dissented on the grounds that a different remedy could have been fashioned and that principles of federalism required the Court to defer to the state courts of Florida.
The Court’s holding in Bush v. Gore was extremely controversial, prompting widespread accusations of political partisanship. Scholars have blamed the case for reducing trust in the election process and affecting the Supreme Court’s public image as an independent judicial body.
To read contemporary scholarly criticism, see The Unbearable Rightness of Bush v. Gore (2001), by Nelson Lund; and The Unbearable Wrongness of Bush v. Gore (2002), by Lawrence Tribe.
To read a retrospective article about the case’s legacy, see Bush v. Gore and Equal Protection (2020), by experts from Election Law at Ohio State.
[Last updated in September of 2024 by the Wex Definitions Team]