ST. CROIX — A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed two lawsuits challenging different aspects of the 2026 election process.
The rulings narrow — but do not end — a broader legal challenge brought by three prospective candidates against election officials.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage dismissed both the plaintiffs’ March 9 and May 1 lawsuits without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction, concluding the challengers had not demonstrated the concrete, imminent harm necessary to establish standing in federal court.
A third lawsuit filed May 13 remains pending.
The plaintiffs — Shelley Moorhead, Collister Fahie, and Lorelei Monsanto — have filed three separate federal actions tied to the administration of the 2026 election cycle. Their initial March lawsuit alleged that campaign finance transparency laws had gone unenforced in the territory for more than two decades. They later filed a May 1 challenge focused on ballot access and the role of political party certification in the election process.
Savage’s dismissal orders did not reach the plaintiffs’ underlying constitutional claims. Instead, the court concluded that the alleged injuries remained too speculative to establish federal jurisdiction. Because both dismissals were entered without prejudice, the rulings do not prevent the plaintiffs from bringing future claims should a concrete injury later materialize.
Savage did not issue a memorandum explaining his ruling in the March 9 case. In the May 1 case, however, he issued a detailed memorandum explaining why the court lacked authority to hear the dispute.
The lawsuit challenged election procedures administered by Supervisor of Elections Caroline Fawkes and the Board of Elections. Each plaintiff advanced a separate theory.
Moorhead, an aspiring independent candidate for delegate to Congress, argued that independent candidates face unequal burdens because they must gather nomination signatures while also navigating voter-status verification rules. He specifically challenged the Elections System’s policy that only signatures from active voters count toward nomination petitions and argued that independent candidates lack the infrastructure available to party-affiliated candidates.
Savage rejected that argument, finding Moorhead had not shown any ballot denial was imminent.
The plaintiffs had also argued that excluding inactive voters from nomination petition counts conflicted with public guidance issued by Fawkes stating that inactive voters remain registered and may update their registration status before Election Day and receive a ballot. Savage concluded the complaint still depended on assumptions about how election officials might ultimately evaluate nomination petitions.
The judge wrote that Moorhead did not allege that obtaining 200 signatures itself was impossible or excessively burdensome, only that collecting valid signatures could be more difficult. Savage also pointed to publicly available inactive voter lists maintained by the Elections System and concluded any future rejection based on invalid signatures remained speculative.
Monsanto, who seeks to run for the Legislature as a Democrat, challenged an April 23 mediated settlement agreement between the Democratic Party and elections officials.
Under that agreement, election officials provide the party with a list of prospective candidates who submitted nomination packages and indicate which candidates satisfy statutory requirements, after which the party submits a certified list for placement on the primary ballot.
Monsanto argued the arrangement subjected her candidacy to undefined internal party standards and deprived her of due process.
Savage found she had not alleged an actual denial of certification.
“She does not claim DPVI will decline to certify her candidacy,” the memorandum stated. “She has alleged merely that it is capable of doing so.”
Fahie, who seeks to run as a Republican candidate for the Legislature, argued that uncertainty surrounding formal recognition of the Republican Party of the Virgin Islands could interfere with his ballot access.
Savage concluded Fahie’s alleged injury was also hypothetical and, to the extent delays existed, they involved administrative matters before the Lieutenant Governor’s Office — not the named defendants.
In concluding the case, Savage wrote that all three plaintiffs were asking the court to intervene based on anticipated future decisions by election officials rather than actual exclusions from the ballot.
“The plaintiffs have not set forth specific facts demonstrating that the defendants will impermissibly reject their nomination petitions,” Savage wrote. “They only speculate as to how ESVI and Fawkes will rule in determining their eligibility for candidacy on the ballot.”
The ruling follows Savage’s earlier decision in the same case to partially grant an emergency temporary restraining order temporarily blocking election officials from excluding candidates solely for failing to satisfy Democratic Party certification requirements while the court considered additional briefing. Tuesday’s dismissal dissolved that challenge without reaching the merits.
The dismissals remove two of the three pending challenges but leave unresolved the broader dispute over party certification and ballot access raised in the remaining May 13 case.
Unlike the dismissed May 1 case, the remaining May 13 lawsuit does not challenge the settlement framework itself. Instead, it questions whether the entity operating as the Democratic Party of the Virgin Islands has the legal authority and statutory continuity under Virgin Islands law to administer candidate certification affecting access to the public ballot.
Representing the party and its chair, Carol Burke, attorney Peter Lynch has moved to dismiss that case, arguing the plaintiffs lack standing and are improperly conflating internal party governance with ballot access administered by election officials.
The plaintiffs, in their opposition, dispute that characterization and contend the certification process directly affects placement on the ballot.
The plaintiffs contend that DPVI has misrepresented its legal authority. The party’s certification plan cites the 2024 federal ruling in Republican National Committee v. Virgin Islands Board of Elections as establishing exclusive authority to certify candidates, but the plaintiffs argue that ruling addressed only internal party governance and explicitly stated it did not regulate general elections or ballot access. They allege Fawkes misread the 2024 RNC ruling to insulate party certification decisions from government oversight, effectively handing a private organization control over the public ballot. They further claim the Democratic Party failed to file required organizational rules and misrepresented board authorization during mediation.
Court filings indicate all three plaintiffs submitted nomination papers before the filing deadline and received receipts from election officials, shifting the dispute from candidate filing to post-submission verification and certification decisions.
The legal dispute is connected to an April 9 lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party against the Elections System, Fawkes and Board of Elections Chair Raymond Williams that ended in a mediated settlement agreement establishing revised candidate-certification procedures for the 2026 primary election.
