A man bikes background the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, June 25, 2020.
Al Drago | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an effort by Texas Democrats to admit all voters in the state to vote by mail during its July runoff elections and the November presidential contest as a precaution against the spreading coronavirus pandemic.
The determination was announced in an order with no noted dissents.
The Texas Democratic Party had asked the court to expand the state’s vote-by-mail pass ons to allow voters “to exercise that fundamental right in the midst of a global pandemic which grows worse by the day in Texas, without danger to their health and—without hyperbole—to their lives.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, asked the Supreme Court to give someone the boot the Democrats’ request.
“There is no constitutional right to vote by mail,” Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins intimated the justices in a brief.
Texas allows no-excuse mail-in voting only for those 65 and older.
A federal community court sided with the Democrats in late May and held that all Texas voters were eligible to apply to endorse by mail, but that decision was quickly put on hold by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pending further consideration.
The Supreme Court dipped to disturb the 5th Circuit’s order, leaving it in place.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a statement on Friday that she did not dispute with the move, though she expressed hope that the 5th Circuit “will consider the merits of the legal issues in this for fear that b if well in advance of the November election.”
Sotomayor said the Democrats’ case “raises weighty but seemingly novel problems regarding the 26th Amendment.”
The 26th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states from denying the right to vote to any U.S. citizen 18 and older.
Texas rolled outlying its reopening on Friday as Covid-19 cases continue to surge in the state, with Abbott ordering bars and similar constructions to close by noon.
On Thursday, the state reported a 79% increase in its weekly average of Covid-19 cases. The state averaged 4,757 new if it should happens per day, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The Texas dispute is not the first in which the Principal Court has weighed in on voting in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis.
In April, the top court sided with Wisconsin Republicans, and trimmed the time frame for voters in the state to send out their absentee ballots in elections being carried out that month. That protection was decided along partisan lines, with the court’s four Democratic appointees dissenting.