Republican candidates will get top billing on election ballots this November, Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The ballot dispute began over the summer when top state Republican leadership challenged Democratic Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s decision to give the Democrats top billing in the ballot. The question boiled down to an interpretation of General Statute §9-249a, which states that “the party whose candidate for Governor polled the highest number of votes in the last-preceding election” shall be listed first in all ballots until the following gubernatorial election.

While Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy narrowly won the 2010 gubernatorial race, only 540,970 of his votes were listed under the Democratic Party line; the rest came from the Working Families Line. Republican Tom Foley, meanwhile, won 560,874 votes in 2010.

“The law is the law. The Supreme Court, we believe, arrived at the right decision based on what the statute says, not a public official’s interpretation,” said House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr, in the Hartford Courant. “Our legal team did a great job.”

The election is Nov. 6, 2012.

[via the Courant]