Brewster won re-election on Allegheny County's 45th Senate District by a razor-thin margin of 69 votes. Nicole Ziccarelli, Brewster's Republican opponent from November, challenged the results in federal court after losing a challenge in state court. She claimed the results were not valid because votes were counted differently in the two counties spanning the district. For example, Westmoreland County did not count ballots that weren't properly date marked on an outer envelope, but Allegheny County did count ballots that weren't properly date marked on the outer envelope. U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan in a 14-page ruling on Tuesday said his court was “bound by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s interpretation of this state law — which directly applies to the very ballots at issue here.”