The Supreme Court on Wednesday evening blocked a lower court order that would have allowed voters to cast ballots curbside at Alabama polling places on Election Day.
Whit it matters: With less than two weeks until Election Day, the justices voted 5-3 to reinstate the curbside voting ban and overturn a lower court judge's ruling designed to protect people with disabilities during the coronavirus pandemic.
SCOTUS allows Alabama to restore ban on curbside voting. Here’s the order with Justice Sotomayor’s brief 5-page dissent (joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan). https://t.co/Q6DDEpAINr pic.twitter.com/NqXKr5OT3R
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) October 22, 2020
Of note: Liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
- The lower court judge ruled in favor of a lawsuit arguing that curbside voting would "violate federal laws designed to protect America’s most marginalized citizens."
What they're saying: In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor wrote,"We should not substitute the District Court's reasonable, record-based findings of fact with our own intuitions about the risks of traditional in-person voting during this pandemic or the ability of willing local officials to implement adequate curbside voting procedures."
The big picture: The pandemic has seen the 2020 elections fight spill into courtrooms across the country, including the Supreme Court.
- On Monday, the Supreme Court denied a request from Pennsylvania's Republican Party to shorten the deadlines for mail-in ballots in the key state.
- Democrats in another battleground state, Michigan, have appealed to the Supreme Court after an appeals court last Friday blocked a lower court's decision that extended the absentee ballot deadline by 14 days.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.
