The Supreme Courtroom stated Tuesday it gained’t hear civil rights teams’ enchantment looking for to invalidate Pennsylvania’s courting requirement for mail ballots, which has invalidated hundreds of votes every current election and turn out to be a central authorized battle over voting in the important thing swing state.
The Pennsylvania State Convention of the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and different organizations claimed the requirement violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits states from denying the fitting to vote due to an immaterial error. Republicans have sought to implement the courting requirement.
The Supreme Courtroom turned away the teams’ enchantment with out remark, nevertheless it comes after Pennsylvania’s high courtroom on Friday introduced it might hear a separate lawsuit towards the courting requirement.
That lawsuit, which additionally includes the ACLU, challenges the requirement as violating the Pennsylvania Structure’s Free and Equal Elections Clause.
In 2019, Pennsylvania enacted no-excuse mail voting underneath Act 77, which additionally established technical necessities like returning the mail poll envelope with the proper date.
For years, the ACLU and different teams have filed intensive litigation looking for to permit the hundreds of people who well timed return their ballots with a lacking or improper date to nonetheless have their vote counted.
The battle once more whiplashed via the courts upfront of the current presidential election, when President Trump flipped Pennsylvania 4 years after former President Biden gained it.
Within the lead-up to November’s contest, Pennsylvania’s high courtroom repeatedly ordered the date requirement be enforced. It later chastised native Democratic officers who tried to defy the courtroom’s ruling by counting the challenged ballots.
Civil rights teams have mounted a number of arguments towards the courting requirement however broadly insist it’s meaningless as a result of election officers timestamp mail ballots when they’re obtained.
“All agree these voters are qualified, that they filled out and returned their ballots on time, and that the handwritten date has nothing to do with confirming voters’ identities or qualifications, determining timeliness, or preventing fraud. In other words, all agree the error is immaterial,” the ACLU wrote in its excessive courtroom petition.
The ACLU additionally informed the justices that the Pennsylvania’s high courtroom’s consideration of the opposite lawsuit might “result in binding statewide precedent that effectively resolves the issue in this litigation.” The justices ought to maintain the petition or ship it again to a decrease courtroom till the opposite case is resolved, the ACLU argued.
The Republican Nationwide Committee informed the justices to let the decrease ruling stand, which discovered the courting requirement doesn’t violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a result of its materiality provision applies solely to registration kinds, not precise ballots.
“Petitioners again challenge the date requirement but can invoke zero appellate precedent supporting, much less adopting, their reading of the Provision. No surprise, then, that Petitioners do not identify any split in appellate authority. That is reason enough to deny their petition and, at a minimum, allow the question presented to percolate in the lower courts before taking it up,” the RNC wrote in courtroom filings.
