In June 2016, a class action lawsuit was filed against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for violating the DNC Charter by rigging the Democratic presidential primaries for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders. Even former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid admitted in July 2016, ““I knew—everybody knew—that this was not a fair deal.” He added adding that Debbie Wasserman Schultz should have resigned much sooner than she did. The lawsuit was filed to push the DNC to admit their wrongdoing and provide Bernie Sanders supporters, who supported him financially with millions of dollars in campaign contributions, with restitution for being cheated.

On August 25, 2017, Federal Judge William Zloch, dismissed the lawsuit after several months of litigation in which DNC attorneys argued that the DNC would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own candidate. “In evaluating Plaintiffs’ claims at this stage, the Court assumes their allegations are true—that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent,” the court order dismissing the lawsuit stated. Though this assumption of a plaintiff’s allegation is inherently taken to be true in a class action lawsuit, the court’s decision reflects a dire state of democracy in this country where the DNC’s own rules in holding primary elections is out of the court’s hands, proving the DNC attorney’s claims that the DNC is within their right to rig primaries.

The order then explained why the lawsuit would be dismissed. “The Court must now decide whether Plaintiffs have suffered a concrete injury particularized to them, or one certainly impending, that is traceable to the DNC and its former chair’s conduct—the keys to entering federal court. The Court holds that they have not.” The court added that it did not consider this within its jurisdiction. “Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, possessing ‘only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.'”