In Risky Move, Texas Democrats Appeal 5th Circuit Absentee Voting Decision to Supreme Court, Claiming 26th Amendment Violation

You can find the cert petition here and application to vacate the 5th circuit’s stay of the district court order here. Here is the question presented: “Does Texas’s limitation of the right to cast a no-excuse mail-in ballot to only voters who are ’65 years of age or older on election day,’ Tex. Election Code
§ 82.003, violate the Twenty-Sixth Amendment’s directive that the right to vote ‘shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age’?”

I say this is risky because it could turn a bad precedent about the scope of the 26th Amendment in the 5th Circuit to one that would apply nationwide. Even if one believes (as I do) that litigation to expand the scope of the 26th Amendment makes sense, this is coming up from a terribly drafted district court opinion and this case has the potential to make very bad law at the Supreme Court. I find the chances of getting relief from this Court on this issue with this record to be very, very small.

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