The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday denied a prosecutor’s appeal and left in place an order sending the state’s fake elector case back to a grand jury, forcing Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes to start that part of the prosecution over. Her office said it will again present the case in its entirety to another grand jury.

The ruling lands in a case that has moved only in bursts since it was filed nearly three and a half years after the 2020 election. It keeps alive a sprawling prosecution against 18 defendants, including former President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, while leaving the timing of the restart unclear.

A lower-court judge in Phoenix had concluded in May that the first grand jury was not shown the text of the Electoral Count Act, and the next judge then ordered the case sent back for another grand jury review. That procedural finding gave Mayes an immediate setback, because the state must now present the evidence again before any fresh step toward trial can move forward.

Giuliani’s attorney, Mark L. Williams, said the court’s decision left his client in a posture he called meritless. He said, “In my mind, the whole thing is meritless,” and added, “Mr. Giuliani has done nothing wrong.” Defense lawyers have also argued that the law in effect allowed multiple slates of electors when results were disputed, a position that clashes with Mayes’ office, which says it will again present the case as a whole to a grand jury.

The prosecution has already been slowed by a dozen dismissal requests, and the first judge on the case recused himself in late 2024 after an email surfaced. Three defendants have resolved their cases, including one who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, while the rest have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges. The case remains one of the most closely watched 2020 election-related prosecutions still active in the country.

The Arizona case sits alongside related cases in Nevada and Wisconsin, even as similar prosecutions in Michigan and Georgia were dismissed by the courts and a federal case was dropped in late 2024. In Arizona, Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in 2020 is the backdrop to the dispute, and the next question is not whether Mayes will try again — she said she will — but how long the new grand jury step will delay a case that is still unresolved more than three years after the election.