From our mothership, the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Atlanta could become the center of the political storm on Monday when a federal appeals panel hears a lawsuit that seeks to force the Democratic National Committee to seat all of Florida’s delegates at the party’s national convention in August.

The suit was filed in August in Tampa on behalf of Floridian Victor DiMaio. It claims the DNC violated his constitutional rights when it stripped Florida’s Democratic Party of all 210 of its delegates to the convention as punishment for holding its Jan. 29 presidential primary earlier than DNC rules allow.

The suit was rejected at the district court level in Tampa, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has agreed to hear the case.

DiMaio said Thursday in an interview that the appellate panel’s decision to hear the case gives him hope.

“They’ve cleared the entire docket for the entire afternoon,” DiMaio said. “They definitely want to hear our argument.”

"We have been impatiently waiting for the Appeals Court to grant us this hearing considering the fact that time is running out if we have to appeal our case to the United States Supreme Court if the Florida Delegation is still shut out of the convention in August at the same time the Supreme Court takes its annual recess" according to Mr. DiMaio. "We are grateful to the Atlanta Justices for granting us the best option of of the three options available. The Court could have denied our appeal and dismissed our case or they could have asked us to mail in our pleadings. Instead they have granted us the opportunity to present oral arguments and the Court has cleared their docket for an entire afternoon, an option that was denied to us at the Tampa District Court. Considering the closeness of the Presidential Election at this point, every delegate vote could make a difference in deciding who the next President could be.