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Page Number: 29

6 

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE v. WISCONSIN 
STATE LEGISLATURE 
KAGAN, J., dissenting 

right  to  vote  in  a  health  crisis  outweighs  conforming  to  a 
deadline created in safer days. 
  Indeed,  I  see  no  more  apt  time  for  the  district  court  to 
have  issued  its  injunction  than when it  did.    The  court  of 
appeals insisted that the injunction would better have come 
in  May,  a  half-year  before  Election  Day;  then,  the  court 
said, the order “could not be called untimely.”  ___ F. 3d, at 
___,  2020  WL  5951359,  *2.    But  “untimely”  can  mean  too 
early as well as too late.  And a May order could have been 
premature, perhaps even foolishly so.  At that time, the dis-
trict court could not have known the course COVID would 
take.  Cf. FDA v. American College of Obstetricians & Gy-
necologists, ante, p. ___ (instructing a district court to con-
sider whether pandemic conditions have changed enough to 
warrant modifying an injunction).  Nor could the court have 
known  about  the  current  ability  of  Wisconsin  election  of-
fices or the Postal Service to handle increased demand for 
mail  ballots.    (Doubts  about  the  Postal  Service’s  delivery 
performance, for example, did not arise until August.)  In 
waiting until late September, the district court resolved to 
base  its  ruling  on  concrete  evidence—not  on  unfounded 
speculation.  
  And  without  Purcell,  not  much  is  left  in  the  appellate 
court’s opinion to justify its stay.  That court separately ar-
gued  that  “the  design  of  electoral  procedures”  is  a  solely 
“legislative task.”  ___ F. 3d, at ___, 2020 WL 5951359, *2; 
see also ante, at 4–6 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring).  But that 
is not so when those procedures infringe the constitution-
ally  enshrined  right  to  vote.    See,  e.g.,  Anderson  v.  Cele-
brezze, 460 U. S. 780, 786 (1983) (invalidating a state filing 
deadline); Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U. S. 663, 
666 (1966) (invalidating a state poll tax); Reynolds v. Sims, 
377  U.  S.  533,  568  (1964)  (invalidating  state  districting 
maps).    To  be  sure,  deference  is  usually  due  to  a  legisla-
ture’s decisions about how best to manage the COVID pan-
demic.  See South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, 590