Out Police Sergeant Pam Cap’s name will appear on absentee ballots for the Democratic primary in Calumet City, Ill. However, whether she will stay on the regular ballot or not remains to be seen.

Cap, who hopes to unseat mayor Michelle Markiewicz Qualkinbush, is fighting to stay on the ballot after an electoral board decision disallowed her from running. Previously, Cap’s attorneys had filed a challenge in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, stating that the Calumet City electoral board gave too broad of an interpretation of the limits of police involvement in politics.

The Times reports:

Cook County Judge Susan Fox Gillis on Monday issued a stay that prohibits Calumet City officials from enforcing the electoral board order that bumped Cap from the Feb. 24 Democratic primary ballot on grounds that her duties as a police officer made her ineligible to run for a municipal office.

Without that stay, those wishing to vote early in the city’s Democratic primary would only have the option of casting ballots for Mayor Michelle Markiewicz Qualkinbush. Should a court ultimately remove Cap from the ballot, any early ballots cast for her will not be counted.

Attorneys for both Cap and Calumet City used a 20-minute hearing in Gillis’ courtroom at the Daley Center to establish a schedule by which both sides will file legal briefs in support of their cases. Attorneys for both sides then will get to file written responses to those legal briefs. This process is expected to take up the rest of this week.

“This means I’ll be a busy reader this weekend,” Gillis said.

Actual oral arguments in Cap’s appeal will be heard Feb. 3 before Gillis.

Among the documents that Cap’s attorneys plan to file to support their case is a copy of a legal brief in support of a police officer in west suburban Cicero.

That officer’s attorney is James Nally, who also is the attorney who argued before the electoral board in Calumet City earlier this month to get Cap removed from the ballot.