Tennessee joined 20 other states in petitioning the Supreme Court to take up a lower court case about a Pennsylvania mail-in ballot law.
The state attorneys general requested this week that the Court review and overturn a federal appellate court’s decision striking down Pennsylvania’s law requiring voters to handwrite the date on their mail-in ballots.
The appellate court ruled in August 2025 that Pennsylvania must accept mail-in ballots even if they lack the proper dates on the return envelope.
“Because of the Commonwealth’s date requirement, an inadvertent typographical error or a flipped number or even a stray pen mark in the date field will remove the ballot contained within
the return envelope from consideration. And the voter may never be the wiser,” the appellate court ruling said.
In the amicus brief, the attorneys general said the Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to set election rules.
“The power to set election rules comes with the responsibility of making difficult policy choices in a politically-sensitive area where States must balance between sometimes-competing considerations—such as making voting easier and ensuring election integrity,” they wrote.
The attorneys general added that states had a “strong interest” in being able to set their own election laws.
“That interest is undermined when judges insert their own policy preferences into elections and displace rules enacted by the people’s elected representatives,” the attorneys general stated.
They recognized that courts needed to use discretion to “enforce constitutional and statutory demands, such as prohibitions against racially discriminatory rules.” However, the attorneys general noted if judges overturn state election laws “without clear legal authority to do so, citizens will rightfully fear that the judiciary is interfering with their elections.”
In the specific case of the appellate court’s decision, the attorneys general said it “utterly discarded all rules of judicial restraint in the election-law context; and it badly erred in enjoining
Pennsylvania’s requirement that individuals voting by mail handwrite a date when filling out ballot declarations.”
But, the attorneys general did acknowledge that “widespread confusion persists over how to apply this Court’s right-to-vote jurisprudence,” noting that “federal appellate courts apply different standards of review.”
The confusion “leaves judges with too much discretion to second-guess legislative policy choices,” according to the attorneys general.
They said the Supreme Court should “clarify the standard of review for right-to-vote claims.”
“This Court should confirm that the atextual constitutional right to vote prohibits only (1) discriminatory voting rules and (2) those that impose severe burdens and thus block access to the voting booth,” the attorneys general explained.
They said the appellate court’s decision is incorrect “under that (or any appropriate) standard.”
“All agree that Pennsylvania’s date requirement is not discriminatory,” the attorneys general stated.
Mandating people who vote by mail to handwrite the date “does not impose a severe burden on voters or block access to the voting booth,” they noted.
“Further, the date requirement regulates only mail voting; the fact that Pennsylvanians can simply avoid the rule by voting in person should also foreclose finding a constitutional right-to-vote violation,” they added.
The attorneys general noted the appellate court’s decision “misapplies precedent and deepens substantial splits among the federal appellate courts over how to apply this Court’s constitutional right-to-vote standard.”
“If the panel’s decision stands, litigants around the country will understand that all mandatory election rules are vulnerable to invalidation. This Court should close that Pandora’s box, grant certiorari, and ultimately reverse,” they said.
Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said democracy solely functions “if people have faith in elections.”
“Common sense safeguards, like requiring a voter to handwrite a date on a mail-in-ballot envelope, should not be controversial. Courts need to protect the legitimacy of the electoral process, not undermine it,” he stated.
In addition to Tennessee, attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia signed onto the brief.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com.
Photo “Casting Ballot in Drop Box” by Lbeaumont. CC BY-SA 4.0.
