D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5) has formally appealed a ruling from the D.C. Board of Elections that declared him ineligible to run for attorney general, mounting what is likely his last-ditch attempt to stay in the race.

Reflecting what is an extremely tight timeline to get the matter resolved, with ballots set to be printed in the next two weeks, McDuffie’s legal team is seeking a quick decision, asking the court to consider and rule on his appeal by April 28.

The tight timeframe reflects that fact that elections board has said it wants to conduct a lottery to determine ballot order on April 29, and has to start mailing out ballots to military and overseas voters by May 2. Ballots will start being mailed to regular voters on May 17.

If a decision by April 28 isn’t possible, McDuffie wants the court to consider issuing a brief stay on the board’s decision and the primary itself, potentially pushing the city’s June 21 election to a later date. (By law ballots for military and overseas voters have to be mailed out 45 days ahead of the election; should those mailing be delayed because the court is still considering McDuffie’s appeal, so too could the date of the primary be pushed back.)

In a 120-page filing with the D.C. Court of Appeals, attorneys for McDuffie say the elections board erred when it determined earlier this week that he does not meet the qualifications to run and serve as attorney general, specifically a provision of law requiring that any candidate must have “actively engaged” in the practice of law for five of the 10 years preceding the election. Siding with a challenge from fellow candidate Bruce Spiva, the board said McDuffie’s 10 years on the council did not count as practicing law.

But McDuffie’s team says being a councilmember did force him to use his legal skills on a regular and consistent basis.

“He is not only an active member of the D.C. Bar and a veteran attorney who practiced law for years in the District; he has spent the last decade writing the District’s laws, analyzing proposed legislation’s lawfulness and effect, and advising his constituents and fellow councilmembers on the constitutionality, legality, and substance of the law,” McDuffie’s attorneys argue. “Simply put, he is precisely the sort of candidate District voters and councilmembers had in mind when they made the office of Attorney General an elected position and established the office’s minimum qualifications.”

During a hearing at the elections board this week, Spiva’s attorneys contended that McDuffie’s interpretation is misguided, largely because he is not formally employed by the city as an attorney and he does not serve specific clients. Spiva’s attorneys also noted that fellow lawmakers serve in the same capacity without needing to be lawyers.

In their appeal, McDuffie’s legal team adds it is implausible that the councilmembers who wrote the qualifications into law more than a decade ago would have sought to disqualify themselves from eventually running for attorney general. D.C.’s attorney general was made an elected office for the first time in 2014. (Last week, two former councilmembers who are attorneys said in a letter printed in The Washington Post that McDuffie is qualified to run.)

McDuffie’s lawyers also say that the court should broadly interpret the city’s qualifications so as to include more potential candidates who used their legal experience and skills in a number of ways. And they deride the independent three-person elections board as “bureaucrats.” (The board’s members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council; McDuffie voted in favor of confirming all three current members, who are attorneys.)

“The Board was wrong,” they say. “To begin, this Court, like courts across the Nation, holds that qualifications for elected office must be construed in favor of the candidate, that there is a presumption that candidates for office are qualified to serve, and that any doubt or ambiguity must be resolved in favor of eligibility. That presumption reflects the fact that voters, not bureaucrats, are best suited to decide whether a candidate is qualified, and it serves the fundamental right of voters to cast their votes for the person of their choice.”

On Friday afternoon, seven current and former councilmembers — Phil Mendelson, Vincent Gray, Kwame Brown, Yvette Alexander, Tommy Wells, Michael Brown, and David Catania — filed a brief supporting McDuffie’s position, arguing that none of them “believed or believe that the language… would disqualify Council Members, who were members of the D.C. Bar, from seeking to become Attorney General.”

The last time the Court of Appeals overruled the elections board was in 2014, in a case involving the election of attorney general. The winning attorney at that time was Gary Thompson, who is now the chairman of the elections board.

Some of McDuffie’s supporters are also quietly pushing the council to get involved by passing emergency legislation that would clarify the qualifications for attorney general to make clear that the Ward 5 councilmember can run. But such action also faces its own headwinds, from the political optics of sitting lawmakers passing  a bill to benefit a colleague, to the reality that they would have to do so within the next week; such a move would require calling a rare emergency legislative session.

In the meantime, Spiva has continued his campaign, unveiling a campaign ad that has aired on local TV and digital streaming. The other two candidates in the race are Ryan Jones and Brian Schwalb. McDuffie recently has been endorsed by a number of labor unions, while Jones has drawn the endorsement from Vincent Orange, a former councilmember who is currently running to succeed McDuffie on the council. Schwalb has been endorsed by Attorney General Karl Racine.

The issue of qualifications for attorney general has been hashed out in other states. In 2006, Tom Perez (who served as Secretary of Labor under President Barack Obama) was disqualified from running for Maryland attorney general because he did not meet the requirement of practicing law for a decade before the election. In 2010, a Connecticut judge dismissed a similar challenge to the Secretary of the State’s qualifications to serve as attorney general there, broadly ruling that her work in that office counted toward the 10-year requirement of practicing law. But the state supreme court then reversed the decision, ruling the candidate ineligible.

But McDuffie’s team says that in a Montana case dating back to 2014, the state supreme court more broadly interpreted qualifications for a candidate running to be a justice, allowing him on the ballot despite debates over whether he had practiced law for long enough. They also argue that D.C.’s law is different than those in Maryland or Connecticut, allowing employment by the city government to serve as a qualifying consideration.

The debate over D.C.’s qualifications for attorney general is not new. In 2014, Lateefah Williams, one candidate for the position, tried to determine whether she met the same requirements now at issue in McDuffie’s candidacy. In a 2014 op-ed in The Washington Blade, she says she never got a definitive answer from the elections board.

“It is absolutely outrageous that… a potential candidate cannot receive definitive guidance on a key qualification for the race. It should increase the outrage that the result may serve to silence a candidate who is a member of several underrepresented groups that otherwise will not have a voice in this race,” she wrote. Since Williams’ qualifications were never challenged, she appeared on the ballot.

This post has been updated to include the legal brief filed by seven current and former councilmembers.