Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman was dealt another setback Wednesday in his legal efforts to overturn a state-certified recount in his 2008 U.S. Senate contest, which shows him losing his re-election bid to Democratic challenger Al Franken by 225 votes.

    The ruling on an absentee ballot-counting issue by a three-judge Minnesota court panel - which is presiding over the dispute that has delayed a final result in an election held almost four months ago - could give Coleman material for a future appeal to the federal courts.

    The court unanimously denied Coleman's request, made Monday, asking the court to reconsider an order it issued last week involving absentee ballots that had been rejected for technical reasons. The order eliminated at least 13 of 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots from consideration in the trial.

    Coleman's lawsuit hinges on reconsidering as many as 5,500 absentee ballots it says were wrongly rejected. The court's decision last week whittled that number to approximately 3,500.

    Coleman's attorneys argued that the court violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution - "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," the same argument that was cited in the Bush v. Gore case that certified George W. Bush 's victory in the 2000 presidential election. The attorneys pointed to categories of ballots rejected by the court that had been counted in some precincts during Minnesota's recount. In light of this, they argued those categories should not have been thrown out.

    Ben Ginsberg - a prominent Republican lawyer who is acting as attorney and spokesman for Coleman - said in a statement announcing the request that the decision would disqualify "a large number of ballots that are the exact same as hundreds, if not thousand [sic], that have already been counted."

    The court's refusal to reconsider that decision "rejected emphatically" Coleman's attempts to use "this federal law as a guide for what they claimed was a better understanding of state law," said Edward B. Foley, an election law professor at Ohio State University's Mortiz College of Law.

    Foley said, however, that the ruling does not put to rest all equal protection issues. For example, Coleman's legal team could "go back and say this 225-vote margin is infected, if you will, by ballots that have been ruled by this three-judge panel as not-legal votes." Foley said it's unlikely state law would allow previously counted ballots to be from removed from the tally, but Coleman could argue the count as a whole is invalid.

    "I don't think the court can simply ignore [the equal protection issue]," Foley said. "It has to dispose of that one way or the other."

    Whether and how the judges opt to address Coleman's equal protection arguments could encourage the one-term Republican senator to consider a potential appeal to either the state Supreme Court or a federal district court.

    The Coleman campaign alluded to as much in its statement Monday, quoting Ginsburg, "Without a remedy, we will be faced with a widespread equal protection problem that would not only violate the law, but create constitutional legal issues that would only delay this process further."

    The Franken campaign claimed that Coleman's legal team is laying the groundwork for an appeal, pointing to its decision to continue questioning witnesses this week on categories of ballots that are no longer part of the trial.

    "The court on Friday ruled inadmissible and irrelevant certain classes of ballots that didn't meet the statutory requirements of Minnesota law," Franken attorney Marc Elias said after the court was adjourned Monday. "So what you saw today ... essentially was Norm Coleman's lawyers making a record for appeal."

    The Coleman campaign has been mum on whether it is planning an appeal. It did not respond to calls Wednesday, releasing only a statement claiming the court's decisions on the matter have resulted in "a legal quagmire that makes ascertaining a final, legitimate result to this election even more difficult."